Phubbing Test

"Phubbing" is a blend of "phone" and "snubbing": the act of snubbing the people in your company by turning your attention to your smartphone instead. The word was coined in the early 2010s as part of a deliberate campaign to give a name to a behavior that had quietly become universal, and it soon migrated from marketing into everyday speech and then into cyberpsychology research. What began as a catchy label for a modern annoyance turned out to describe a measurable pattern with real consequences for relationships. This test is based on the Generic Scale of Phubbing (GSP), developed by Varoth Chotpitayasunondh and Karen Douglas at the University of Kent and published in Computers in Human Behavior in 2018. It uses its own original items and is not identical to the published scale.

When Chotpitayasunondh and Douglas set out to measure phubbing, they found that the behavior is not a single habit but a cluster of related tendencies. Their work traced phubbing back to several overlapping components, and this test profiles four of them. Each facet captures a different way that phone use can crowd out the people in front of you, and your scores show where your own pattern runs strongest.

Nomophobia — literally "no-mobile-phone phobia" — is the anxiety and restlessness you feel when your phone is out of reach, together with the compulsion to check it constantly. It is the internal engine of phubbing: the pull toward the screen that makes ignoring others feel almost involuntary. Interpersonal Conflict captures the friction your phone use creates with the people around you: the complaints, the arguments, and the sense that your attention is chronically divided. Self-Isolation is the tendency to retreat into your screen rather than engage with those present — using the phone to fill silences, dodge awkward moments, or withdraw from a room that has started to feel tiring. Problem Acknowledgment reflects your own awareness that the habit has gone too far, along with the repeated, unsuccessful attempts to cut back that so often go with it.

Research using phubbing measures has consistently linked the behavior to poorer relationships. "Partner phubbing" — being snubbed by a romantic partner in favor of their phone — predicts lower relationship satisfaction, an effect that appears to run partly through conflict over phone use and reduced feelings of intimacy. Phubbing also tends to be reciprocal: being phubbed is one of the strongest predictors of phubbing others, so once the behavior enters a relationship it can settle into a self-reinforcing loop. Studies further connect phubbing to smartphone dependence, fear of missing out, and lower self-control, suggesting the habit is anchored in the same processes that drive problematic phone use more generally.

This test profiles your phubbing across the four facets and combines them into an overall Total score. Your results are charted against estimated comparison markers rescaled from published GSP research samples — for example, a typical adult smartphone user sits around 41% overall, with per-item averages that fall somewhat below the midpoint of the scale. These markers are shown so you can see roughly where your answers fall relative to a general adult sample; they are estimates, not validated percentiles for this exact test.

This test is provided for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not a diagnostic instrument and does not provide psychological advice. The comparison values shown are estimates rescaled from published research samples, not standardized norms for this test. This test is not affiliated with Varoth Chotpitayasunondh, Karen Douglas, or the University of Kent. If your phone use is interfering with your relationships or well-being, consider speaking with a qualified professional.

References

• Chotpitayasunondh, V., & Douglas, K. M. (2018). Measuring phone snubbing behavior: Development and validation of the Generic Scale of Phubbing (GSP) and the Generic Scale of Being Phubbed (GSBP). Computers in Human Behavior, 88, 5-17.
• Roberts, J. A., & David, M. E. (2016). My life has become a major distraction from my cell phone: Partner phubbing and relationship satisfaction among romantic partners. Computers in Human Behavior, 54, 134-141.