Phubbing: How Phones Pull You Away From Your Loved Ones

Partners and close friends top the list of who we ignore while checking our feeds.

Phub off

When it comes to smartphone etiquette, we tend to be pretty rude. Most of us — 62 percent according to a new Australian poll— have checked our phone in the middle of an in-person conversation.

The people we snub the most are romantic partners and close friends, according to The Conversation, perhaps because those relationships can survive the occasional rudeness in the form of phubbing — phone snubbing.

All Night Long

Aside from commuting and lunch breaks — honestly, we get it — the most common place people phubbed was in bed, scrolling Reddit or Twitter for hours before falling asleep next to their partner, according to the research, which will be published next month in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems.

And aside from frying your eyes by staring at a bright blue screen in a dark room, phubbing could be a serious detriment to your relationships. Research published in the journalPsychology of Popular Media Culture in 2016 suggests that cell phone use — texting your bud during dinner or tweeting during movie night — can harm personal relationships and personal well-being.

Screen Time

Of course, these findings alone aren’t enough to extrapolate the future of relationships. But all signs are pointing to the increasing presence of personal technology in our lives, especially our bedrooms, are getting in the way of human intimacy.

Next time, instead of scrolling Reddit for relationship horror stories, see if you can try and prevent your own.

READ MORE: Phubbing (phone snubbing) happens more in the bedroom than when socialising with friends [The Conversation]

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