From TFA, in case you were also confused: “Phubbing is the act of snubbing someone during face-to-face interactions by using smartphones instead of paying attention to them.”
I understand that “language grows”, and that it often does so chaotically and in a non-organised way, and all that stuff, but as a non-native English speaker, I often find myself wondering if English—and in particular modern English—is just trolling us at this point.
The author is using a funny sounding made up word to attract interest to their research.
Also, the word is nonsense just the practice. Pay attention to what and who is in front of you. Eyes up, please.
This doesn't mean that you are not allowed to have an opinion as to whether a particular linguistic development is a good thing.
See also "The Great Vowel Shift" as another example contributing to the roots of English in more dynamic change [1]
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English_creole_hypoth...
[1]
Creoles are descended from pidgins that later become full languages, i.e., they become more complex. Creolised languages, on the other hand, are languages that simplify radically due to contact with other language groups. Now, the _outcome_ might be similar, but the difference in terminology is useful to distinguish the direction of change.
It doesn't take long for this kind of thing to happen, and we have prominent written evidence of this in the form of Afrikaans, which began as a creolised form of Dutch, which was already one of the more straightforward West Germanic languages.
All I came across are some industrial terms, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snubbing