Partners’ phones are lit up and in active use during roughly 27% of the time couples spend together, according to objective phone-tracking data published in a 2025 study in Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies. That habit, known as “phubbing,” is tied to lower relationship satisfaction and higher depression, and the fallout isn’t split evenly between partners: women are absorbing the worst of it.
Key Points
- Partners’ phones were actively in use during 27% of shared time together, tracked directly rather than self-reported.
- About 86% of people used their phone every single day while in their partner’s physical presence.
- Higher phone use around a partner correlated with lower relationship satisfaction, weaker co-parenting quality, more depression, and lower overall life satisfaction.
- Women showed more pronounced negative effects than men across these outcomes, per Euronews’ coverage of the findings.
What makes this data different from the last decade of phone-shaming headlines is the method. Most phubbing research to date has relied on people guessing how often their partner checks a phone, which is a notoriously fuzzy self-report. This study instead pulled objective usage data — actual screen-on time — while couples were together, then matched it against relationship and mental health outcomes. The 27% figure isn’t a vibe. It’s measured.
Nearly nine in ten people in the study reached for a phone every day while sitting right next to their partner. That’s not a once-a-week distraction during a boring errand run — it’s a daily, near-automatic habit that’s baked into how couples now spend ordinary time together, from dinner to the last twenty minutes before bed.
The consequences tracked in the research go beyond “my partner ignores me.” Higher partner phone use in shared time was linked to lower relationship satisfaction, worse co-parenting quality among couples with kids, more symptoms of depression, and lower general life satisfaction. And per the Euronews writeup of the findings, those effects were more pronounced for women than for men — meaning the same amount of scrolling next to a partner appears to cost women more, emotionally, than it costs men.
That gender gap tracks with a broader pattern researchers have documented around “technoference” — the everyday interruptions phones cause in couple time, whether it’s a notification buzzing mid-conversation or a partner’s eyes drifting to a lock screen. It’s a small moment, repeated dozens of times a day, and this study suggests it adds up to something that shows up in mental health data, not just in relationship complaints.
None of this means phones are the sole culprit behind a rocky relationship — correlation isn’t causation, and plenty of other factors shape how satisfied a couple feels. But the shift from self-reported guesses to tracked, objective phone data gives this particular finding more weight than the usual “put your phone away at dinner” advice. If a quarter of your together-time is quietly split with a screen, the data suggests your partner is probably feeling that gap more than you think.
