BOOK REVIEW
The Psychology of Phubbing, by Yeslam Al-Saggaf. Singapore: Springer Nature, 2022. XI+89 pages. EUR 54.99 (Softcover). ISBN 978-981-19-7047-4
People rarely notice the first small cut. In Al-Saggaf’s account, it happens at a dinner table, or in a car stopped at a red light, or on a couch at the end of a long day. A child is telling a story about school, something small but important to them, and the parent nods while their eyes slip downward. The phone lights up the face. The child keeps talking for a moment, then stops. Nothing dramatic follows. No argument. No raised voice. Just a pause that lingers too long, a feeling that something shared has gone missing. This quiet moment, repeated across homes, offices, and friendships, forms the emotional engine of The Psychology of Phubbing. The tension does not come from cruelty or intention. It comes from absence. Someone is there, and not there, at the same time. That split presence, the book suggests, has become one of the defining social facts of modern life, even as we pretend it is harmless.
The author of this careful and unsettling book is Dr Yeslam Al-Saggaf, an Associate Professor in the School of Computing, Mathematics, and Engineering at Charles Sturt University in Australia. His authority on the subject rests not only on academic standing but on a long public record of studying how technology reshapes moral life, attention, and power. He has advised companies like Snapchat, spoken to global bodies including the United Nations and UNESCO, and shared his research with audiences ranging from BBC World Service listeners to students enrolled by the thousands in his online ethics courses. With more than ninety research publications and over sixteen hundred citations, Al-Saggaf writes as someone who has spent years watching how small design choices and habits ripple outward into families, workplaces, and public culture. That experience matters here, because phubbing is easy to dismiss as rude behavior. Al-Saggaf insists it is something deeper, and his credentials make that insistence hard to ignore.
The book is a compact monograph of eight chapters, written without sectional breaks, which gives it a steady, almost conversational flow. The early chapters establish what phubbing is and why it deserves attention, grounding the discussion in empirical studies rather than moral panic. From there, the focus moves outward, examining the effects of phubbing in specific relationships: parents and children, romantic partners, friends, bosses and employees, and members of the same family across generations. Only after laying out these relational harms does Al-Saggaf turn to the inner life of the phubber, mapping the psychological predictors that make phone checking feel automatic or even necessary. The later chapters widen the frame again, asking how social norms grow around these habits and how phubbing shifts from being an individual choice to a shared expectation. The structure mirrors the experience of phubbing itself, starting with a single act and ending with a culture that barely notices it.
One of the book’s strongest contributions is its clear-eyed synthesis of research on relational harm. Al-Saggaf shows that when parents phub their children, the effects echo far beyond momentary hurt feelings. Studies he reviews link parental phone distraction to children’s increased anxiety, lower perceived parental warmth, and more frequent behavioral problems. In romantic relationships, phubbing correlates with lower relationship satisfaction and higher conflict, not because phones are evil objects but because they signal that someone else, somewhere else, matters more right now. Friendships suffer in quieter ways, through the slow erosion of trust and mutual attention. In workplaces, the damage becomes institutional. When managers phub employees, it undermines engagement and signals disrespect, a finding that aligns closely with Roberts and David’s (2017) work on boss phubbing and employee motivation. By organizing these findings by relationship type, Al-Saggaf gives scholars and practitioners a usable map of where harm occurs and how it differs across social roles.
This relational focus places the book squarely within human computer interaction while extending its reach into social issues in management. Phubbing is not framed as a personal failing but as an interaction between humans and persuasive technologies designed to demand attention. That perspective matters for managers, marketers, and organizational scholars who often talk about engagement as something to be maximized. Al-Saggaf quietly flips the question, asking what kinds of engagement degrade trust when they spill into face-to-face settings. His analysis resonates with Andersson and Pearson’s (1999) theory of workplace incivility, where small norm violations escalate over time. Phubbing becomes a modern form of incivility, subtle enough to excuse, frequent enough to normalize, and powerful enough to reshape expectations of respect. By naming this dynamic, the book offers management research a way to connect everyday device use with broader patterns of organizational culture.
The chapter that explores psychological predictors is where Al-Saggaf’s balance shows. He does not reduce phubbing to addiction alone, though he acknowledges compulsive checking and fear of missing out as key drivers. Habit formation, boredom, anxiety, and social pressure all appear as triggers, interacting differently depending on context. A parent may phub to manage work stress, while a teenager may do so to maintain peer belonging. This nuance avoids the trap of blaming individuals for behaviors that are encouraged by design. Here the book aligns with Bhargava and Velasquez’s (2021) analysis of the ethics of the attention economy, which argues that responsibility is shared between users and platforms. Al-Saggaf extends that argument by showing how structural pressures become visible as relational wounds, turning abstract ethics into lived experience.
There are moments where readers may want more confrontation. Al-Saggaf tends to write with restraint, even when discussing harms that feel profound. Some critics may argue that he understates the agency people retain in choosing when to put their phones down, or that he leans too heavily on correlational studies. These tensions create a healthy debate rather than a flaw. By resisting dramatic claims, the book invites readers to sit with discomfort instead of rushing to solutions. It also opens space for disagreement about where responsibility should lie, with individuals, organizations, or designers. That openness strengthens the work’s credibility, even as it frustrates those looking for quick prescriptions.
The discussion of social norms is where the book’s quiet power becomes most visible. Al-Saggaf argues that phubbing persists not because people enjoy being ignored, but because mutual ignoring feels safer than insisting on full attention. When everyone checks their phone, no one has to risk appearing needy. This insight connects phubbing to social theory, framing it as a collective agreement to lower expectations. It also explains why efforts to curb phone use often fail unless norms shift alongside habits. The book suggests that phubbing is learned behavior, reinforced by observation and repetition, which makes it especially relevant to family systems and organizational hierarchies where power shapes what is acceptable.
Comparisons with Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together (2011) are unavoidable, and Al-Saggaf acknowledges the lineage. Turkle offered a wide cultural diagnosis of how technology reshapes intimacy, capturing the loneliness that can exist amid constant connection. Al-Saggaf complements that work by narrowing the lens to one behavior and tracing its specific effects. Where Turkle wrote a sweeping social portrait, Al-Saggaf provides an analytical close-up, organizing evidence in a way that makes the phenomenon measurable and actionable. The two books read well together, one offering the mood and the other the mechanics of a culture half turned away from itself.
A similar relationship exists with Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism (2019). Newport advocates intentional technology use as a path to focus and meaning, often addressing readers as individuals seeking change. Al-Saggaf supplies the missing relational argument for why such restraint matters. By detailing how phubbing harms children, partners, and colleagues, he gives ethical weight to choices that might otherwise seem like lifestyle preferences. For policymakers and organizational leaders, this connection is crucial. It reframes attention not as a personal resource but as a shared social good, shaped by norms and incentives.
The book’s relevance to dyadic relationships is clear, but its reach extends further. In organizations, phubbing influences trust, authority, and morale, making it a subtle driver of inter-organizational issues when cultures clash. A company that tolerates constant device checking may unintentionally signal indifference to clients or partners who expect presence. On a personal level, the book touches on nostalgia, not as sentimentality but as memory of a time when attention felt less contested. That sense of loss runs through the narratives Al-Saggaf cites, giving the research an emotional undercurrent without slipping into lament.
For marketing researchers, ethical scientists, and policymakers, the book offers a grounded framework for thinking about brand engagement and positive psychology. It challenges the idea that more engagement is always better and asks who bears the cost when attention is stretched thin. In policy contexts, this perspective supports arguments for humane design and workplace norms that protect focus. In family life, it encourages conversations about presence that go beyond screen time limits. Across these domains, The Psychology of Phubbing functions as both diagnosis and mirror, reflecting habits many readers will recognize in themselves.
What lingers after reading is not a rulebook but a heightened awareness of those small pauses, the moments when a conversation falters because a screen has intruded. Al-Saggaf does not ask readers to abandon their devices or retreat from modern life. He asks them to notice what happens when attention is divided and to consider who pays the price. In doing so, he gives language to a common unease and situates it within a careful scholarly frame. The book’s achievement lies in making something ordinary visible again, and in reminding us that attention, once lost, is hard to recover, not because it disappears, but because we learn to live without it.
Disclosure of interest
The author(s) confirm that there are no financial or non-financial competing interests.
Statement of funding
No funding was received.
References
Andersson, L. M., & Pearson, C. M. (1999). Tit for tat? The spiraling effect of incivility in the workplace. Academy of management review, 24(3), 452-471.
Bhargava, V. R., & Velasquez, M. (2021). Ethics of the attention economy: The problem of social media addiction. Business Ethics Quarterly, 31(3), 321-359.
Newport, C. (2019). Digital minimalism: Choosing a focused life in a noisy world. Penguin.
Roberts, J. A., & David, M. E. (2017). Put down your phone and listen to me: How boss phubbing undermines the psychological conditions necessary for employee engagement. Computers in Human Behavior, 75, 206-217.
Turkle, S. (2011). Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Basic Books.
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Reviewed by:
Mayukh Mukhopadhyay
Executive Doctoral Scholar
Indian Institute of Management Indore
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