Phubbing Is Rarely Malice. It Still Can Hurt.

At a quarter past six on a Tuesday in Portland, Oregon, Maya came in from the garage with two bags of groceries and said that the school had called about Friday. Marcus was at the counter, phone in one hand, and he said “mm-hm.” She put the bags down. She said it again, a little louder. He looked up, and for a second it was plain that he had not heard either version.

She had a word for it by the time she got the milk into the fridge. She had seen it that week in a headline, and it had made her laugh. Now it did not.

What does phubbing mean?

Phubbing is the everyday name for snubbing the person you are with by looking at your phone. Merriam-Webster defines it as “the act of snubbing someone in a social setting by looking at your phone instead of paying attention,” and traces the word to May 2012, when Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary and an advertising agency put phone and snubbing together. Searches for phubbing rose steeply in the United States over the past year.

Between partners it is common. In a Baylor University survey of 453 adults, published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, 46 percent said their partner phubbed them, and 23 percent said it had caused conflict between them. The researchers, James Roberts and Meredith David, measured it with ordinary moments: a phone kept in the hand, a glance at the screen mid-sentence, a phone placed where it can be seen, a check during a lull in the conversation.

Connection and Intimacy in the Age of the Phone

The Gottman Institute has not studied phubbing specifically. But Dr. John Gottman has written about phones and distractions from technology in The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.

Partners are always making small bids for each other’s attention, affection, humor or support. “The school called about Friday” is a bid. So is a sigh, or a text in the middle of the day. The other partner turns toward the bid or turns away. Turning toward can be as small as answering “Are we out of butter?” with “I don’t know. Let me go get some just in case,” instead of a shrug. Turning away is the shrug, or not looking up. Gottman research also describes a third response, turning against: answering with irritation, “can’t you see I’m busy?” A tendency to turn toward your partner, Gottman writes, is the basis of trust, emotional connection and passion.

In Gottman’s six-year study of newlyweds, the couples who stayed married had turned toward each other’s bids 86 percent of the time. The couples who divorced had done so 33 percent of the time. Most of their arguments, Gottman found, were not about money or sex. They grew out of bids that went unanswered.

Gottman cites a study of young professional couples in Los Angeles who were found to spend thirty-five minutes a week in conversation with each other, much of it about errands, and he names the constant interruption of devices as one of the reasons. A device, he writes, can enable turning away, and a partner who wants to avoid a hard conversation will sometimes reach for one. Usually, he adds, the inattention is not deliberate. People do not notice how habit-forming the devices are, and couples ignore each other’s needs “out of mindlessness, not malice.”

First, Gottman writes, take the complaint seriously. If your partner says you seem more interested in your phone than in them, that is an issue, even if you disagree. Then agree on rules of etiquette that work for the two of you, starting with no texting or email at meals, on date night, or when either of you needs to talk. “Most of us readily turn off our devices at houses of worship or theaters,” Gottman writes. “We need to extend that same respect and courtesy to our spouses.”

The next Tuesday, Maya came in with the groceries and the phone was face down on the counter. Marcus asked what the school had said about Friday. She told him, and this time she only had to say it once.

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