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Phone zombie

Phone zombie illustration: pedestrians turned zombies staring into their phones run into danger and bump into each other while crossing a road

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A phone zombie is a regular pedestrian turned zombie walker because they’re busy staring at their phone.

Sometimes it’s hard not to be a phone zombie—whether it’s a notification about where you’re about to meet, a message about something you just finished at work, texting to say you’re on your way home, a sudden thought to look something up, reading a weekly newsletter, or maybe it’s just switching the podcast. On a long, quiet street on my commute, I’ve also read a book while walking. There are so many reasons why it’s easy to turn into a phone zombie walking unthinkingly down the street.

Once, while waiting for a crossing light to change and checking train times on my phone, I noticed the people around me starting to cross. Taking my cue, I began to walk too, only realising a few steps later, with a car bearing down on me, that the light hadn’t changed to signal it was ok to cross. I’ve also seen people walk into cyclists, a near miss with a bus driving close to the curb, and someone tripping and falling. Take care, and don’t let it be you!

Also known as smartphone zombies, smombie for short, or zombie pedestrians.

You can get a printed gift of phone zombies , but as zombies aren't that nice to look at, I also made a friendlier version of phone zombies

Also see: continuous partial attention, when drinking tea and phubbing

Published 3 Dec 2023

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Phubbing illustration: Someone sat in a cafe being phubbed by their friends on their phones while a parent and child walks by, gently heartbroken by being upstaged by a phone

Desire path: the difference between design and use illustrated by a person crossing a corner of grass

Hump-Back Stations illustration: an above and below ground cross-section of an urban environment is shown, displaying the rise and fall of an underground transit tunnel as it approaches and departs a station platform - allowing gravity to play its part in slowing the train down, uphill as it comes into a station and accelerating it away, downhill on departure.

Hump-back stations

Phubbing: snubbing people for your phone. We've probably all experienced it — heck, we've probably all done it at one point or another — or at least it's likely to be familiar. Someone in a restaurant waiting for their friends to put their phones down. A family gathering where people are no longer talking to each other. A teacher without the attention of their students. A child failing to get the attention of an adult who's trying to process some messages on their phone. Research on phubbing, mostly since the word was coined, says it largely has the effects you'd think it would. The effects vary with who's being phubbed and who's doing the phubbing: bosses and employees, family members, parents and kids, or partners. Whoever's phubbing who, snubbing is a suitable root word for it — it's not so nice to feel snubbed. I learned about phubbing from the Mind over Tech community — they also have a newsletter on forming better digital habits. The word phubbing has the unusual distinction of being created for an advertising campaign to sell a dictionary. Phubbing, you may have spotted, is a portemanteau. For more phone annoyance see halfalogue. See, for example, Knausenberger, J. et al. (2022). Feeling Ostracized by Others’ Smartphone Use: The Effect of Phubbing on Fundamental Needs, Mood, and Trust. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.883901 Also see: phone zombie, continuous partial attention, when drinking tea…Phubbing: snubbing people for your phone. We've probably all experienced it — heck, we've probably all done it at one point or another — or at least it's likely to be familiar. Someone in a restaurant waiting for their friends to put their phones down. A family gathering where people are no longer talking to each other. A teacher without the attention of their students. A child failing to get the attention of an adult who's trying to process some messages on their phone. Research on phubbing, mostly since the word was coined, says it largely has the effects you'd think it would. The effects vary with who's being phubbed and who's doing the phubbing: bosses and employees, family members, parents and kids, or partners. Whoever's phubbing who, snubbing is a suitable root word for it — it's not so nice to feel snubbed. I learned about phubbing from the Mind over Tech community — they also have a newsletter on forming better digital habits. The word phubbing has the unusual distinction of being created for an advertising campaign to sell a dictionary. Phubbing, you may have spotted, is a portemanteau. For more phone annoyance see halfalogue. See, for example, Knausenberger, J. et al. (2022). Feeling Ostracized by Others’ Smartphone Use: The Effect of Phubbing on Fundamental Needs, Mood, and Trust. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.883901 Also see: phone zombie, continuous partial attention, when drinking tea

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