by KORIN MILLER
According to StopPhubbing.com, New York City is the city with the worst phubbing behavior IMAGE/Infographic: StopPhubbing.com
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.
Study co-author James A. Roberts, a professor at Baylor University and author of Too Much of a Good Thing: Are You Addicted to Your Smartphone?, tells Yahoo Health that there is a direct correlation between phubbing and relationship issues. “We found that the ones that reported higher partner phubbing fought more with their partner and were less satisfied with their relationship than those who reported less phubbing,” he says.
Yahoo for more
(Thanks to reader)