Relationship Advice: Curb Your Enthusiasm for Phubbing
Why constant smart phone usage during a dinner out is not emotionally smart.
Posted February 11, 2026 | Reviewed by Davia Sills
Picture this: You’re out on a romantic date, and instead of taking a lot of photos of your food, catching up on random posts on platforms, and commenting on the restaurant décor in an online review no one asked for, you leave the phone in your pocket, bag, or man purse. Why might this be a good idea?
Devoting all your attention to your dinner partner increases the sense of connection, and if your dinner partner is your lover, it may be the best foreplay you can have in public without touching. Communing via eye contact and responding verbally and nonverbally to the person across the table from you also contributes to a sense of intimacy and relationship satisfaction. The opposite of this is something called phubbing.
Phubbing is ignoring or snubbing people with your phone or other digital device. Ni and colleagues (2025) determined that phubbing is now a widespread behavior that can have detrimental effects on relationships of all kinds. They found that attachment anxiety , attachment avoidance, and loneliness are significantly correlated with phubbing, and this behavior negatively affects romantic relationship quality, intimacy, responsiveness, and overall sense of emotional closeness.
A study by Sun and Samp (2022) looked at mental health factors and personality traits associated with this behavior and how staring at your phone instead of your partner impacts satisfaction with love relationships as well as friendships. The study found that people with anxiety (e.g., social anxiety , fear of missing out, etc.) or depression were more likely to be on their phones during social interactions. People who scored high on neuroticism were also more likely to phub. What personality factor was associated with less phubbing? Agreeableness .
How agreeable you are is correlated with a willingness to engage in conversation versus engaging in death scrolling. That is, someone who scores higher on friendliness, kindness, and cooperation is more likely to look into their dinner partner’s eyes and set the phone aside for 45 minutes. When in in-person conversations, people with high levels of agreeableness deem phubbing discourteous and just plain rude to their conversation partners (Sun and Samp, 2022). Studies also demonstrate that greater amounts of phubbing led to lower degrees of satisfaction in intimate relationships. For instance, Aslanturk and Arslan (2025) found that partner phubbing significantly reduces the phubee’s (the partner being phubbed) commitment to the relationship via emotional loneliness.
Whether phone addiction is an actual thing or not, it can be challenging to put one’s phone down, especially in situations where one is likely to be anxious (a crowded, noisy room, an unfamiliar dinner location, etc.). But attending to your dinner partner, whether a lover or friend, is a gift that permits emotional intimacy. Nowadays, setting down your phone face down or turning it off sends a clear message: “You’re important, and you have my attention.” Perhaps that’s better than a bouquet or a box of chocolates.
Aslanturk, A., & Arslan, C. (2025). How does being phubbed affect commitment? Exploring the roles of emotional loneliness and relationship satisfaction. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy , 51 (3), e70027. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmft.70027
Ni, N., Ahrari, S., Zaremohzzabieh, Z., Zarean, M., & Roslan, S. (2025). A meta-analytic study of partner phubbing and its antecedents and consequences. Frontiers in Psychology , 16 , 1561159. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1561159
Sun, J., & Samp, J. A. (2022). ‘Phubbing is happening to you’: Examining predictors and effects of phubbing behaviour in friendships. Behaviour & Information Technology , 41 (12), 2691–2704. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2021.1943711
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Kyle D. Killian, Ph.D., LMFT is the author of Interracial Couples, Intimacy and Therapy: Crossing Racial Borders.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.