Are you giving more attention to your phone than your S.O.? This habit is called “phubbing,” and it’s probably not doing your relationship any good.
We’ve all been there: You’re spending quality time with your partner, when they whip out their phone and completely block you out.
While the action is small, it can be infuriating — and new research has discovered that it can cause everything from a decrease in your relationship satisfaction to feelings of depression.
For the uninitiated, phubbing (short for “phone snubbing”) is a term coined to capture the practice of ignoring the person you’re with by paying more attention to your phone than to them.StopPhubbing.com, a tongue-in-cheek website devoted to spreading awareness about the behavior — they report that “if phubbing were a plague, it would decimate six Chinas” — features a spot where you can upload images of your friends phubbing, called “the Phubbing Hall of Shame.”
The new research findings were part of a study of more than 450 adults on “partner phone snubbing” (which they called “Pphubbing”) that was published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.
Among the more detailed findings:
- More than 46 percent said they’ve been phubbed by their partner.
- More than 22 percent said phubbing caused issues in their relationship.
- Nearly 37 percent said they feel depressed at least some of the time.
