Phubbing: when phones get between partners, and what couples and families can try this holiday season

The couple below is invented for illustration; they are not real people or clients. It is a weeknight in mid-November. Dinner is over, the kids are finally in bed, and two partners sit on the same couch. One starts to describe a tense conversation with a manager earlier that day. The other nods, says “mm-hmm,” and keeps scrolling. A few minutes later the roles flip: a text from a sibling about Thanksgiving plans arrives, and now the second partner is the one talking, and the first is answering an email. Neither of them meant to be rude. Both go to bed feeling a little alone.

There is a name for this. Phubbing, a blend of “phone” and “snubbing,” describes paying attention to your phone instead of the person you are with. When it happens between romantic partners, researchers call it partner phubbing. With Thanksgiving on November 26 and a long stretch of family meals, school breaks and time at home ahead, we look at what studies have found about phubbing in relationships and families, where the evidence is still limited, and some small, realistic ways couples and parents might keep phones from crowding out the people in the room.

What is phubbing, and how common is it?

Many people have probably been on both sides of it: glancing at a screen mid-conversation, or talking to someone whose eyes keep drifting down to theirs. Fewer people know the word for it. In its 2020 report on dating and relationships in the digital age, the Pew Research Center noted that relatively few Americans are familiar with the term “phubbing,” but notable shares say they have encountered the behavior in their romantic relationships.

The numbers come from a nationally representative survey of 4,860 U.S. adults conducted online October 16 to 28, 2019. Among partnered adults (people who are married, living with a partner or in a committed relationship):

• 51% said their partner is often or sometimes distracted by their cellphone while they are trying to have a conversation with them.
• Four in ten said they are often or sometimes bothered by the amount of time their partner spends on their cellphone, including 12% who said they feel this way often.
• The experience was most common among partnered adults ages 30 to 49 (62%), followed by those ages 18 to 29 (52%), but it was not limited to younger couples: 41% of partnered adults 50 and older said it happens at least sometimes.

The survey is several years old, and phone habits have kept changing since then, so these figures are best read as a snapshot rather than today’s exact rate. Still, they suggest that if this feels familiar, plenty of couples would recognize it.

Why does a quick glance at a phone sting so much?

A phone check can take two seconds. So why can it leave a partner feeling hurt for the rest of the evening?

Two cross-sectional surveys by Camiel Beukeboom and Monique Pollmann, published in Computers in Human Behavior in 2021 (507 and 386 participants), looked at this question directly. In both studies, more partner phubbing went along with lower relationship satisfaction. Statistically, the link ran through three things: feeling excluded, seeing the partner as less responsive, and feeling less intimacy in the conversation. Because both surveys captured a single moment in time, they cannot show which came first. Once those three were taken into account, conflict over phone use and jealousy did not add a significant explanation.

In plain terms, the hurt may come less from the phone itself and more from what it seems to say: right now, something else matters more than you. That fits with what psychologist John Gottman calls bids for connection: a partner’s attempts to get attention, interest or affection. A story about a hard day is a bid. A screen in the way can make it easy to miss, even when nobody intends to turn away.

The researchers also found a hopeful detail. Shared phone use, meaning involving your partner in what you are doing on the phone or telling them about it, softened the negative effects. The authors suggest that informing and including a partner may reduce feelings of exclusion and help keep responsiveness and intimacy in the conversation.

What does the wider research on phubbing show?

A 2025 meta-analysis in Frontiers in Psychology by Nie Ni and colleagues pulled together 52 studies (58 samples, 19,698 participants) on partner phubbing. Across those studies, partner phubbing was linked with lower relationship and marital satisfaction, lower relationship quality, less intimacy, less responsiveness and less emotional closeness, as well as more conflict and more jealousy.

The same analysis looked at what tends to go along with phubbing in the first place. Attachment anxiety, attachment avoidance, depression and loneliness were all significantly correlated with it, and problematic media use, which the authors call media addiction, showed the strongest association. Self-esteem was not a significant predictor.

It is worth being careful with these findings. The authors point out that most of the studies were cross-sectional, which prevents causal conclusions about whether phubbing damages relationships or whether relationship distress leads to more phubbing. Both may be true for some couples. A partner who already feels disconnected may reach for the phone more, and a partner who keeps reaching for the phone may make the other feel more disconnected. That kind of loop can happen in many relationships, which is one reason blaming the phone alone may not be enough to change things.

How can phones affect parents and young children?

Phones do not only come between partners. Researchers Brandon McDaniel and Jenny Radesky, then of Illinois State University and the University of Michigan Medical School, use the word technoference for everyday interruptions of parent-child time by digital devices.

In a study of 170 U.S. families with young children (average age about 3), published in Child Development, only 11% of participating parents said technoference did not happen on a typical day, while 48% said it happened three or more times a day. Mothers’ technoference was linked with both parents’ reports of more child behavior problems, including acting out and withdrawn or anxious behavior. The families were mostly white, married and college-educated, and the data were gathered in 2014 to 2016, so the results might look different in other households. The authors were also clear about other limits: the data came from parents’ own reports at a single point in time, the effects were generally small, and the direction of the relationship still needed to be tested.

A later paper in Pediatric Research, drawing on the same group of 183 couples, looked at this over six months, using parents’ reports at four points in time. Like the first paper, it was observational. Across all time points, greater child acting-out behavior predicted more technology interference, through greater parenting stress, and technology interference often predicted more acting-out behavior later. The authors describe a two-way pattern: parents stressed by a child’s difficult behavior may withdraw into their devices, and that device use during time together may in turn influence the child’s behavior over time.

For parents, this research may be more reassuring than it first sounds. It does not suggest that checking your phone makes you a bad parent. It suggests that stress and screens can feed each other, and that noticing the pattern is a reasonable place to start.

Why might the holidays make phubbing more noticeable?

The weeks between Thanksgiving and the new year often bring more time in the same room: long meals, car rides, school breaks and visits with relatives. That can mean more chances for connection and more chances to notice when someone is only half there. It is also a season when phones are doing real work: coordinating travel, sharing photos with family who could not come, answering a work message before the office closes, or simply giving an overwhelmed person a few quiet minutes.

So the goal is usually not zero phone use. It may be closer to agreeing, together, on when the phone helps and when it gets in the way. When the harder conversation is about where to spend the holidays, not how much anyone is on their phone, the Journal piece on how couples can divide holiday visits may help.

What can couples and families try?

Every household is different, so treat these as ideas to talk over together rather than rules to hold each other to. Some may fit, and some may not.

1. Talk about it at a calm moment. “You’re always on that thing” tends to start an argument. Something like “I miss having your full attention at dinner. Could we try leaving our phones in the kitchen?” names the need underneath the complaint. Our page on communicating better in a relationship has more on turning complaints into requests.
2. Pick a few phone-free times and places. The American Academy of Pediatrics’ Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health suggests creating screen-free times and places at home, such as meals and bedtime, and setting do-not-disturb times on devices. Those ideas may work for adults as well as kids. Thanksgiving dinner might be a natural place to try it.
3. Narrate and include. The AAP tips also suggest that when your attention is on your device, you tell your kids what you are doing. Partners can do the same: “I’m checking whether Grandma’s flight landed” may land very differently from silent scrolling. In the Beukeboom and Pollmann studies, sharing and informing a partner about phone activities was linked with fewer negative effects.
4. Answer the bid first, then the phone. If your partner or child starts talking while you are mid-scroll, try putting the phone face down and turning toward them, even briefly. “Hold that thought for ten seconds, I want to hear this” can let you finish what you were doing without leaving the person in front of you hanging.
5. Look at what the phone is doing for you. Because phubbing has been linked with loneliness and problematic media use, and parent device use with parenting stress, it may help to ask, without judgment, what you reach for the phone to get: a break, a distraction, a sense of connection, a way out of a tense moment. That can point to needs worth talking about directly.
6. Make a family plan, not a crackdown. The AAP offers an online Family Media Plan tool that households can use to agree on screen rules together. Including the adults’ habits in the plan, not only the children’s, may make it feel fairer.

When might it be about more than the phone?

Sometimes a phone is simply a habit that a few house rules can shift. Other times it is a symptom of something larger. If one or both of you feel lonely in the relationship, if conversations have thinned out to logistics, or if screens have become the main way you avoid each other after a conflict, the phone may be sitting on top of emotional distance that deserves attention of its own.

That is where couples therapy may help. A therapist can help partners notice the pattern as it happens, understand what each person is reaching for, and practice turning back toward each other. When screens and stress are shaping the whole household, family therapy may help everyone talk about it without one person becoming the problem. Results vary from family to family, and many households sort this out on their own. For others, therapy may offer a place to work out what the phone has been standing in for.

Iryna Morhunova-Sutton, LLMFT, offers online therapy for individuals, couples and families who are located in Michigan. If phones, distance or holiday stress are coming between the people in your home, you can reach out through the appointment request form at whatever pace suits you.

If you or someone you love is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or call 911 in an emergency.