Your phone ruins our lunch: Attitudes, norms, and valuing the interaction predict phone use and phubbing in dyadic social interactions

Phubbing—ignoring another person in order to use a smartphone instead—is an increasingly common behavior that disrupts interactions and harms relationships. Using the frameworks of the theory of planned behavior and an interaction value approach, we examined the driving factors of phubbing frequency. Four preregistered predictors were tested: attitudes toward phubbing, subjective norms of phubbing, interaction value, that is, the extent of valuing a social interaction, and the perceived interaction value of the partner. After having had lunch together, a total of 128 participants in 64 dyads filled out a survey assessing the four predictors. Dyadic linear mixed model analyses confirmed that a more positive attitude toward phubbing increases phubbing, as well as being phubbed. Moreover, we disentangled screen-sharing time (i.e., using a phone together), phone use, co-present phone use (i.e., using a phone alone), and phubbing: we found that valuing the social interaction more decreased phone use, but not phubbing, and holding more accepting subjective norms on phubbing increased co-present phone use, but not phone use in general. We further found that the person that used their phone first, phubbed more. Overall, this research extends our understanding of the factors driving phubbing and may be fruitfully harnessed to reduce phubbing.