Your Phubbing Habits Could Ruin Your Love Life

A recent study concluded that phubbing is increasing the level of depression within relationships and may ruin them beyond repair.

The term of phubbing is relatively new, it refers to the moments when one individual desides to ignore another person of group of persons in a social setting by opening his/her phone and looking at it instead of having conversations with the other parties.

Psychologists can tell you all what is wrong with it. Researchers from the Baylor University, Texas, found in a study that the persons who were phubbing were not the soul of the party, but that is nothing new. What is more important is that their phubbing increased the stress and created conflict between the two persons who were supposed to be actively interacting. Therefore, phubbing leads to lower levels of general satisfaction within a relationship.

James A. Robert said that the lack of relationship satisfaction could reduce the overall life satisfaction of most people, leading most of them to depression.

The first survey questioned nearly 350 adults. Researchers asked the volunteers to write a list of habits that they would consider irritating in their partners. Numerous responses included cell phone activities, of which the most frequent of them was looking at a phone during a meeting or a conversation.

For the second survey, researchers asked about 150 participants whether they have ever been phubbed by their partners. Nearly 50% of the participants said that they did, with 22% of them specifying that it caused some kind of conflict in their relationship. However, 32% said that they were satisfied inside of their relationship even if they consider their partners’ phubbing habits annoying.

The vast majority of people tend to assume that their momentary distractions are not a big deal in everyday interactions with important persons. Meredith David, professor of marketing, said that the research shows otherwise. All of the evidence suggests that whenever a couple’s interaction is interrupted by cell phones, it is less likely for the other individual to be satisfied in the relationship.

According to a national survey, more than two thirds of the American adult population owns a smartphone. Phubbing is already a frequent habit among them, just go visit a restaurant and observe the people doing it. The authors stressed that the habit should be avoided as much as possible.

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