10.25384/SAGE.C.5173395.V1
Pancani, Luca
Luca
Pancani
Gerosa, Tiziano
Tiziano
Gerosa
Gui, Marco
Marco
Gui
Riva, Paolo
Paolo
Riva
“Mom, dad, look at me”: The development of the Parental Phubbing Scale
SAGE Journals
2020
Collection
200199 Communication and Media Studies not elsewhere classified
FOS: Media and communications
FOS: Media and communications
170199 Psychology not elsewhere classified
FOS: Psychology
FOS: Psychology
2020-10-13
2021-01-25
2020
10.1177/0265407520964866
10.25384/sage.c.5173395
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
The widespread diffusion of smartphones has opened new challenges regarding the psychological consequences of their usage on social relationships. The term <i>phubbing</i> (a combination of <i>phone</i> and <i>snubbing</i>) indicates the act of ignoring someone in a social context by paying attention to the smartphone. The few existing studies show that phubbing is widespread, mutually reinforced, and socially accepted, with possible negative consequences for social and individual well-being. Phubbing can occur in every social context, including romantic relationships, workplaces, and family. However, to date, minimal attention has been given to the possible impact that phubbing carried out by parents can have on their children. To start filling this gap, in this paper, we introduced a new scale that measures the perception of being subject to parental phubbing and showed the prevalence of perceived <i>phubbing</i> on a stratified sample of 3,289 adolescents. Firstly, the dimensionality, validity, and invariance of the construct were proven. Moreover, our results showed a positive relationship between children’s perceived levels of parental phubbing and their feelings of social disconnection with parents, thus suggesting that the more children felt that one or both of their parents were phubbing them, the less the children felt connected with their parents.