Ignoring your partner by focusing on your smartphone has an effect on couples’ marital satisfaction. And it’s not positive…
A team of psychologists from Niğde Ömer Halisdemir University found evidence showing that married couples who regularly practice phubbing (ignoring the other person by regularly looking at their smartphone) have lower marital satisfaction than those who who don’t. In their study, published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, Suat Kılıçarslan and İzzet Parmaksız sent questionnaires to married couples in Turkey and compiled the results of those who were returned.
The advent of the smartphone has led to the appearance of behaviors never seen before in humans – people becoming glued to an external device. Sociologists have noticed that such changes have an impact – some people feel less alone because they are still “connected”. Others feel more isolated because they never seem to connect directly with anyone.
And now it seems a new behavior has been identified – “phubbing”, or phone ignoring – where people interrupt conversations with others nearby while they’re talking or texting on their phones. . If two people do this to each other, it’s called double-phubbing.
In this new study, researchers explored the impact phubbing might have on marriages. To do this, they created surveys to associate closeness in a marriage with phone use. They sent hundreds to married people in Turkey and received 712 in return, almost half male to female. The average age was 37 years old.
The researchers found a pattern – couples who reported more phubbing at home also reported less satisfaction in their marriage. They note that their results make sense. People tend not to react well when ignored. They did not discuss the possibility that less satisfied partners are more likely to ignore their spouse through their phones. They note, however, that the problem can be easily solved: married couples may try to turn off their phones more often.