What is Phubbing? How It Affects Attachment & Relationships

You’ve probably experienced it firsthand: you're at a family dinner and one person is scrolling on their phone instead of engaging in conversation.

Or maybe you meet up with a friend for coffee, only to watch them spend more time liking posts than making eye contact.

Perhaps you share an intimate moment with your partner, just for them to immediately disconnect and check their notifications. These moments might seem small, but they send a loud message over time: "This screen is more important than you."

This act, known as phubbing, can quietly but powerfully erode emotional intimacy. Phubbing might appear to be a minor distraction or a rude habit, but psychological research reveals a deeper issue, especially when it comes to insecure attachment styles.

In this post, we’ll explore:

• What phubbing actually means (and where the term came from)
• How phubbing affects the different attachment styles and relationships
• The lesser-known impact of phubbing in parenting
• Signs you or your partner might be phubbing
• Why people phub (and the psychology behind it)
• How to stop phubbing and rebuild connection

What is Phubbing?

Phubbing might sound like the noise a seal makes as it slides across the ice—but sadly, it’s not onomatopoeia. It’s actually a word used to describe something way less cute: ignoring someone you’re with in favor of your phone.

The term is a blend of phone and snubbing. It captures those moments when someone checks their notifications instead of making eye contact, scrolls during dinner, or replies to a text mid-conversation. It might seem small in the moment, but over time, it can quietly erode connection and trust.

Phubbing was coined in 2012 during a creative campaign by McCann for the Macquarie Dictionary in Australia. A team at McCann, working with linguists and editors, invented the word as part of a project to show how language evolves. The campaign, called A Word is Born, went viral and helped spark a worldwide conversation about how technology was changing our social behavior, often without us realizing it.

Today, phubbing is a documented relational issue. Research links it to decreased relationship satisfaction, emotional disconnection, and patterns of insecure attachment.

If you’ve ever felt second to someone’s phone or caught yourself doing the same: you’ve experienced the effects firsthand.

Phubbing isn’t about villainizing technology. It’s about noticing the ways our digital habits can chip away at the relationships that matter most.

How Phubbing Impacts Relationships and Attachment Styles

Phubbing isn’t just a minor annoyance or a modern etiquette issue. It is a behavior that speaks volumes about emotional priorities in your relationships and can quietly erode trust, intimacy, and satisfaction over time.

f you’ve ever felt pushed aside by someone scrolling through their phone mid-conversation or caught yourself doing it, there is likely a deeper dynamic at play.

You Might Be More Likely to Phub Based on Your Attachment Style

Recent psychological research suggests that people don’t phub randomly. If you have an insecure attachment style, you may be more prone to turning to your phone to cope with discomfort in face-to-face interaction.

A study by Sun and Miller (2023) found that individuals with dismissive-avoidant and anxious-preoccupied attachment styles were significantly more likely to phub their intimate partners. In these cases, the phone becomes more than a tool– it becomes a buffer against discomfort, vulnerability, or emotional exposure.

The researchers also found that problematic smartphone use mediates the relationship between insecure attachment and phubbing. This means your emotional dependence on the phone may be a key mechanism linking your attachment patterns to this behavior.

In short, you might be reaching for your phone because it feels safer than reaching toward your partner.

Why Being Phubbed Hurts—Especially If You’re Anxiously Attached

If you're on the receiving end of phubbing, especially with an anxious-preoccupied attachment style, the emotional consequences can be significant. Being phubbed by your partner is linked to lower relationship satisfaction, increased feelings of emotional disconnection, and in some cases, resentment and withdrawal.

When your partner chooses their phone over you, especially during intimate or meaningful moments, it can trigger your deepest fears:

• “I’m not enough.”
• “They’re not really present with me.”
• “Something or someone else is more important.”

These findings are echoed in multiple studies by Wang et al., who have documented the effects of both romantic and parental phubbing. Their 2021 and 2023 research confirms that phubbing predicts increased emotional loneliness and has broader developmental impacts when it happens in parent-child relationships.

Phubbing in Anxious–Avoidant Dynamics

In an anxious–avoidant relationship, phubbing often intensifies the disconnection already built into the attachment dynamic. The anxiously attached partner may interpret phone use during key moments as a form of emotional rejection, triggering protests, anxiety, or a need to “chase” for reassurance.

The avoidantly attached partner may use the phone as a buffer: —an easy way to create distance when emotional closeness feels overwhelming. While this may not be conscious or malicious, it reinforces the anxious partner’s fear of abandonment and deepens the avoidant partner’s discomfort with intimacy.

Without intervention, this dynamic becomes self-perpetuating: one partner reaches out, the other checks out. The phone becomes a symbol of emotional unavailability. Recognizing this loop is the first step toward breaking it—and toward building a more secure foundation together.

What is a Phubbing Marriage?

The term “phubbing marriage” has emerged to describe couples who are physically present but emotionally disconnected due to chronic phone use. One partner scrolls while the other speaks. Both check out during dinner. Conversations fade into background noise. Over time, the relationship can feel more like cohabitation than connection.

Even when fights are minimal, the emotional silence grows. You may not feel rejected outright, but you may stop feeling chosen, prioritized, or seen. That is the danger of phubbing—it is a slow erosion, not a sudden rupture.

Is Phubbing Rude?

Yes, but more importantly, it is dismissive. Phubbing is a nonverbal signal that communicates disinterest, disconnection, or distraction. While it may not be intentional, it often leaves the other person feeling neglected or devalued.

When phubbing becomes chronic, the message it sends is clear: “I’m more interested in somewhere else than being here with you.”

Whether that is true or not, the emotional experience can create long-term damage, especially for those with insecure attachment patterns who are already scanning for signs of emotional risk.

Attachment Styles and Phubbing Behavior

Attachment Style	Emotional Driver of Phubbing	Impact on Relationship
Secure	Comfortable with emotional presence. Uses tech mindfully without needing it to manage connection or discomfort.	Maintains trust and mutual attunement. Creates consistent emotional availability and healthy boundaries.
Anxious Preoccupied	Seeks constant connection to soothe fears of abandonment. May turn to phone for validation when feeling ignored or anxious.	Phubbing by a partner can feel like emotional rejection, leading to heightened anxiety, protest behaviors, or neediness.
Dismissive Avoidant	Discomfort with closeness. Uses phone as a way to regulate independently and avoid emotional vulnerability.	Creates emotional distance, reinforces walls around intimacy, and may leave partners feeling shut out or dismissed.
Fearful Avoidant	Torn between wanting closeness and fearing it. May phub to manage inner conflict, self-protect, or avoid intense feelings.	Increases emotional instability in the relationship—partners may feel confused, insecure, or emotionally unsafe.

Phubbing and Parenting: The Hidden Costs

That glance at your phone during playtime. The silent scroll while your child speaks. The distracted nod at the dinner table. These small moments of disengagement might feel harmless, but they shape something far deeper than attention—they shape your child’s attachment system.

What Is Parental Phubbing?

Parental phubbing refers to consistently prioritizing your phone or digital device over emotional connection during shared time with your child. Unlike occasional, necessary use, parental phubbing reflects a pattern where the child routinely experiences a parent who is physically present but emotionally elsewhere.

Children, especially in their early developmental years, rely on your face, your tone, and your attention to feel safe. When you're absorbed in your screen, your child doesn't just see disinterest—they feel it. Over time, this can alter the way they relate to others, to themselves, and to closeness.

How Phubbing Shapes a Child's Attachment Style

Your repeated presence—or absence—during emotionally significant moments lays the groundwork for how your child learns to connect with the world.

Parental phubbing has been shown to disrupt emotional attunement, and this disruption often contributes to the development of insecure attachment styles.

This type of behavior will most likely drive your child to develop a Fearful Avoidant attachment style, but it could create other insecure attachments as well.

Attachment Style in Children	How Parental Phubbing Contributes
Secure (less likely to form)	Emotional responsiveness is unpredictable. When presence is inconsistent, children struggle to develop the confidence that others will show up for them.
Anxious Preoccupied	The child receives intermittent attention. They feel they must compete with the phone for connection, leading to hypervigilance, clinginess, or emotional anxiety.
Dismissive Avoidant	The child consistently experiences emotional unavailability. They learn to downplay their needs, withdraw, or stop seeking comfort from caregivers
Fearful Avoidant	The child receives mixed signals—sometimes warmth, sometimes cold detachment. This creates confusion and deep distrust in emotional closeness.

The Long-Term Effects

When children grow up frequently feeling unseen or ignored, they internalize the belief that connection is conditional or unreliable. This belief can carry into adolescence and adulthood, manifesting in romantic relationships, friendships, and even work dynamics.

According to Wang et al. (2023), parental phubbing has been linked to greater emotional loneliness and external coping mechanisms like materialism. But beneath these outcomes is something deeper—a longing to feel chosen.

Signs You or Someone You Know Is Phubbing

You might not notice it at first. Phubbing often hides in plain sight—quick glances, background scrolling, checking a notification “just for a second.”

But over time, these small behaviors can add up to a larger message: I'm not fully here with you.

Understanding how phubbing shows up—both in yourself and in those you care about—is a key step toward building more mindful, secure connections.

Signs You Might Be Phubbing

If your phone has become a default companion in moments that used to be shared, you may be unintentionally creating emotional distance. Common signs include:

• Checking your phone during conversations—even short or casual ones
• Keeping your phone visible or on the table during meals or downtime
• Scrolling through social media while spending time with your partner or friend
• Using your phone to fill silences or escape emotional discomfort
• Feeling anxious when your device isn’t nearby
• Becoming irritated or defensive when someone mentions your phone use

These habits are often automatic. But with awareness, they can be shifted into intentional choices that foster presence and connection.

Signs Someone May Be Phubbing You

On the receiving end, phubbing can feel like a quiet dismissal. If someone close to you frequently does the following, it may be creating emotional strain, even if unintentionally:

• Frequently checks their phone while you're talking
• Prioritizes online interactions or texts during shared activities
• Seems emotionally “checked out” during important conversations
• Becomes distracted or disengaged during meals, dates, or family time
• Downplays or deflects concerns when you bring up phone use

These moments can feel like micro-rejections. Over time, they chip away at trust, intimacy, and the sense that you're being emotionally chosen.

What Does a Securely Attached Person Do in These Moments?

A securely attached person isn’t perfect, but they tend to:

• Respond to connection bids with attention, not avoidance
• Set healthy boundaries with tech use to prioritize presence
• Make their partner or child feel seen and heard, especially during emotional moments
• Communicate openly about distraction and take accountability when it happens
• Choose connection more often than escape, even when it’s uncomfortable

Mindful tech use is one of the many small ways secure individuals communicate safety. If you’re not there yet, that’s okay. These are habits you can learn.

Checklist: Am I Phubbing Without Realizing It?

Ask yourself:

• Do I need to check my phone even when someone is speaking to me?
• Do I use my phone as a crutch during silences or awkward moments?
• Do I scroll before bed or immediately after intimate moments?
• Have I ever caught myself tuning out of a conversation to check notifications?

If several of these sound familiar, consider whether your phone habits are helping or hurting your relationships. Awareness is the first—and most powerful—step toward change.

Why People Engage in Phubbing

If you find yourself phubbing (or a victim of it), understanding the root cause can help you (or a loved one) break the habit.

Here are some common reasons people phub:

• Fear of Missing Out (FOMO): The urge to stay constantly updated on news, social media, or texts can pull attention away from the present moment. People often feel anxious that something important is happening elsewhere.
• Emotional Regulation: Phones become tools to escape difficult feelings. Reaching for a device can feel like a quick way to regain control, whether it's awkward silences, boredom, or emotional discomfort.
• Digital Dependence: For some, habitual phone use offers comfort in stressful or overstimulating environments. This kind of reliance can start to replace healthier coping strategies.
• Interpersonal Avoidance: Turning to a phone can serve as a barrier to intimacy. Some individuals unconsciously use devices to avoid vulnerability or closeness in conversations or emotionally charged moments.
• Dopamine and Phone Addiction: Frequent smartphone use can also tap into the brain's reward circuitry. Every notification or scroll can release a small dopamine hit, reinforcing the behavior over time. According to the Addiction Center, this pattern can evolve into phone addiction, which is marked by compulsive checking, withdrawal symptoms, and neglect of real-life relationships.

Phubbing and the Path to Secure Attachment

If your phone habits reflect emotional avoidance or anxiety, that doesn’t mean you’re stuck. Just as attachment styles can change through self-awareness, intentional action, and support, so can your relationship with technology.

Steps that help shift toward secure attachment include:

• Naming your habits instead of justifying them
• Creating tech-free spaces to foster presence and trust
• Exploring emotional triggers behind your need to check or escape
• Building alternative coping tools like breathwork, journaling, or reaching out for genuine connection

The more you notice what your phone use is helping you avoid, the more freedom you have to choose connection over control.

Not Sure Where to Start?
What kind of Attachment Style are you? Take the quiz to uncover your unique attachment blueprint and get personalized next steps to over phubbing.

How to Stop Phubbing and Reconnect

Breaking the habit of phubbing isn’t about becoming anti-technology; it’s about using tech intentionally, so it serves rather than sabotages your relationships.

Here are a few strategies to help you reconnect with those around you:

Step 1. Recognize When You Are Phubbing

Begin by noticing when and why you reach for your phone. Is it during pauses? When do you feel awkward? When does a conversation get emotional? Keeping a small log or using a screen-time tracker can raise your awareness.

Step 2. Set Phone-Free Times and Zones

Create intentional boundaries around your tech use. For example, designate meals, car rides, and bedroom time as phone-free. This allows space for natural, uninterrupted connection.

Step 3. Practice Mindfulness with Your Device

Before reaching for your phone, take a deep breath and ask yourself if it’s really necessary. This small pause can help you break automatic habits and bring you back into the present.

Step 4. Communicate Openly About Tech Boundaries in Relationships

Talk with your partner, friend, or family member about how you feel when they phub—and ask how they feel when you do. Set shared expectations and routines around tech use that support connection.

Step 5. Build Healthy Coping Mechanisms

If you notice you’re using your phone to manage stress or regulate emotion, explore alternative tools—journaling, movement, deep breathing, or even brief solitude can offer relief without creating disconnection.

Even small changes, practiced consistently, can lead to deeper presence, increased emotional safety, and a stronger sense of intimacy.

Choose Connection Over Distraction: Your Next Step

Phubbing may seem like a symptom of modern life, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. By becoming more mindful of your digital habits, you can open the door to deeper connection, stronger attachment, and healthier relationships.

Once you identify your attachment style, you can begin healing the patterns that lead to phubbing and emotional distance. Explore courses to build a secure, fulfilling connection:

👉 The Key Pillars to Create a Secure Relationship 👉 Anxious Preoccupied to Secure Path 👉 Fearful Avoidant to Secure Path 👉 Dismissive Avoidant to Secure Path

Connection starts with awareness. Let this be your first step toward meaningful change.

Share this Article