Phubbee

Phubbing is the behavior of an individual's continuous or excessive use of smart phones, which can cause indifference to others, delay, loneliness, anxiety, and other mental disorders (Afdal et al., 2019; Tan et al., 2013). In this social interaction, there are two types of persons: phubbers and phubbees. The former are the originators of phubbing, and the later are the recipients of phubbing (Chotpitayasunondh and Douglas, 2018a). Phubbing not only causes psychological harms to phubbees, but also has a negative impact on the phubbers (Bulut and Nazir, 2019). Cognitive-behavioral theory also posits that individuals' cognition and emotions could affect their behaviors, in the same way, behaviors could also affect cognition and emotions (Chen et al., 2016). However, prior studies had focused more on the influence of phubbing on phubbees, such as the influence of phubbing on the partner's depression and the influence of parental phubbing on children's academic burnout and depression (Bai et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2020; Xie and Xie, 2020), few researchers have paid attention to the influence of phubbing on the phubbers themselves and its influencing mechanism.

Friendship satisfaction is necessary for maintaining relationships with friends. Does friend phubbing threaten friendship satisfaction? Sun and Samp’s (2021) study of United States university students revealed that friend phubbing significantly negatively predicted friendship satisfaction. But, this is the phubber’s view of friendship satisfaction, not the phubbee’s view. That is, individuals who regularly phubbed their friends did so because they were less satisfied with their friendship. It would have been better if phubbees were also asked about their satisfaction with the friend ship after their friends phubbed them. […] Hao et al.’s (2021) study of Chinese university students shed light on friend phubbing from a phubbee’s perspective.

In a recent daily diary study, Thomas et al. (2022) found that on days when daily partner phubbing was high, phubbees reported higher anger/frustration. […] Based on the theoretical framework and existing evidence, partner phubbing may be perceived by the phubbee as an unwanted behavior and an act of being inconsiderate.