Are you guilty of ‘phubbing’? Regularly snubbing your partner into looking at your phone could cost you your marriage, study warns
- Phubbing refers to a person who interacts with your phone instead of a human.
- Study Finds Couples Who Phub Regularly Have Low Marital Satisfaction
For some people, a moment without their phone in hand can seem like a lifetime.
Now a study has warned how our obsession with our phones could be affecting our relationships.
Scientists from Nigde Omer Halisdemir University set out to investigate the effects of ‘phubbing’ (snubbing others over your phone) on married couples.
Worryingly, they found that couples who regularly fight with each other have lower marriage satisfaction.
“When people perceive that their romantic partners are dating more frequently, they experience more conflict and less intimacy in the relationship,” the team explained in their study.
Scientists from Nigde Omer Halisdemir University set out to investigate the effects of ‘phubbing’ (snubbing others over your phone) on married couples. Worryingly, they found that couples who regularly do their hair have lower marriage satisfaction (file image)
Phubbing is a process where a person is distracted by their phone during a conversation with other people.
“Phubbing behavior, to which we may be subjected (phubbee) or the doer of (phubber), manifests as a behavior that is widely observed everywhere in today’s technologically advanced societies,” the team wrote in their study, published in Computers in human behavior.
In their study, the researchers set out to study the effect of this behavior on married couples.
They enrolled 712 married people from Turkey (347 women and 365 men), with an average age of 37 years.
These participants were surveyed about their satisfaction with the marriage, phubbing tendencies, and communication skills.
The results will come as bad news for those who can’t put down their phone – phubbing significantly predicted martial dissatisfaction.
Izzet Parmaksız, lead author of the study, said: “Our research demonstrates the power of effective communication, especially between romantic partners.
“Marital conflict occurs primarily when people are ignored by those they value, and this ignorance leads to lower relationship satisfaction and can affect personal well-being.
“People need to be aware of being present with their loved ones to show they care and put their phone away.”
The study comes shortly after a study revealed that phubbers are more likely to have certain mental health problems.
Researchers at the University of Oklahoma University found that depressed people ‘phub’ their friends more often, whether in a social situation such as a pub or coffee shop, than people without depression.
Socially anxious people who might prefer online social interactions to face-to-face communication also exhibit more phubbing behaviors, the authors say.
