MY WORLD OF TRUTH

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:

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.

Manhattan-based licensed clinical psychologist Joseph Cilona tells Yahoo Health that he’s not surprised at all by the findings. “As the use of smartphones continues to proliferate, negative feelings such as anger, hurt, or jealousy around a significant other’s attention to and engagement with their phone has become a commonplace and often serious problem for many,” he says.

And depression is included among those problems. While it sounds extreme that a partner’s smartphone use can make you feel depressed, psychologist Paul Coleman tells Yahoo Health that the resulting drop in relationship satisfaction is the biggest issue. He says about half of all clinical depression can be linked to relationship unhappiness: “Depression is multifaceted, but often improving the quality of a relationship can help improve depression.”

Of course, not everyone will feel depressed if they’re regularly partner-phubbed. Roberts’s research found that people with anxious attachment styles (i.e., those who need to spend more time with their partner and require higher levels of assurance and validation) had higher levels of cellphone conflict in their relationship than those with less anxious attachment styles.

Want to know if you’re being phubbed? Answer yes or no to the following statements:

The more you answer “yes” to the statements, the more likely phubbing is a potential problem in your relationship.

Here’s how to stop the phubbing