Picture this: you’re out for dinner with your partner. The food arrives, the conversation flows – and then their phone buzzes. They glance down, smile faintly and start typing. You sit there, fork in hand, suddenly invisible.
That moment has a name: phubbing, a mash-up of “phone” and “snubbing.”
It’s become an almost inevitable feature of modern relationships, as
smartphones claim a place at the table – sometimes literally.
You might think of phubbing as a minor irritation, but our research shows it
can erode relationship quality, dent self-esteem, stir up resentment and even
trigger retaliation. And some people are far more sensitive to it than others.
Using a daily diary study, we tracked 196 people over multiple days, asking
them to report how much they felt phubbed by their partner, how they reacted
and how they felt afterwards.
The pattern was remarkably consistent. On days when people felt more
phubbed, they reported lower relationship satisfaction, worse mood and more
anger or frustration.
Phubbing can make the “phubbee” feel excluded, less important and less
connected. This fits with equity theory in psychology – relationships feel
better when both partners invest equally. If your partner is focused on their
phone instead of you, it can signal unequal investment.
Individual differences
Not everyone experiences phubbing the same way. In our 2025 study,
published in the Journal of Personality, we found that attachment style – the
habitual way people think and feel about relationships – played a big role.
People higher in attachment anxiety – who fear abandonment and crave
reassurance – reacted more strongly when phubbed. They reported more
depressed mood, lower self-esteem and greater resentment. They were also