It’s definitely annoying when your friend ignores you in favour of their phone when you’re having a drink, watching a film or having dinner. It’s definitely rude.

But what you might not know is that it could actually be having a significant – and negative – affect on your relationships.

That’s according to a new study from the University of Kent, which found that looking at your phone around other people (sometimes known as phone snubbing or “phubbing”) can “threaten our basic human needs”.

The study looked at the effect of phubbing in one-to-one to social situations – and found that it “significantly and negatively affected the way the person being phubbed felt about their interaction with the other person”.

153 participants were asked to view an animation of a conversation between two people and told to imagine themselves as one of the pair. Each participant was given one of three situations to imagine themselves in – no phubbing, partial phubbing or “extensive phubbing”.

And as phubbing increased, people experienced “greater threats to their fundamental needs”, perceived the communication quality to be poorer and the relationship between the pair “less satisfying”. Researchers also said that phubbing particularly affected “the need to belong” – an important factor in human happiness.

The surprising effect phubbing can have on your relationship