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Facebook Problematically You DOI: 10.1177/0894439318754490
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Will Feel Lonely: Phubbing,
Loneliness, Self-esteem,
and Facebook Intrusion.
A Cross-Sectional Study

Agata Błachnio1 and Aneta Przepiorka1

Abstract
Smartphones are an integral part of people’s life. The aim of the study was to expand the knowledge
on the individual determinants of “phubbing.” Two dimensions of phubbing—communication dis-
turbance and phone obsession—were taken into consideration. We tested the model of relations
between phubbing, self-esteem, loneliness, and satisfaction with life. We administered the Phubbing
Scale, the Facebook Intrusion Scale, the Loneliness Scale, the Satisfaction With Life Scale, and the
Self-Esteem Scale. The participants in the online study were 597 Polish users of mobile phones, with
a mean age of M ¼ 21.22 (SD ¼ 6.52, range: 16–78). The results showed Facebook intrusion to be a
cause of phubbing. Women scored higher than men on both dimensions of phubbing. A low level of
self-esteem and satisfaction with life predicted Facebook intrusion. Additionally, a low level of
loneliness was a predictor of Facebook intrusion, which in turn was a predictor of loneliness. The
results demonstrate the multidimensional nature of phubbing and suggest new directions for future
studies.

Keywords
phubbing, Facebook intrusion, loneliness, self-esteem, satisfaction with life, mobile addiction

Smartphones are an integral part of people’s life. In this article, we will use the terms “smartphone”
and “mobile” interchangeably. What we have in mind whenever we say mobile is a phone with
access to the Internet. They are mobile phones highly advanced in terms of technology, computing
capabilities, and connectivity, with functions similar to those of computers. In fact, people prefer
their smartphones to computers while surfing online (Ofcom, 2015). In 2016, the number of

1
The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Lublin, Poland

Corresponding Author:
Agata Błachnio, The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Al. Raclawickie 14, Lublin 20-950, Poland.
Email: gatta@kul.pl
2 Social Science Computer Review XX(X)

smartphone users was estimated at reach 2.08 billion (Statista, 2015). The digital divide between less
advanced economies and developed economies was 31 points in 2015 for smartphone ownership. In
Poland, 41% of respondents declared owning a smartphone; 75% of them were young people aged
18–34. According to Pew Research Center (2015), 15% of Americans aged 18–29 are dependent on
a smartphone for Internet access. Beside calling, texting, and basic Internet browsing, smartphones
are used for online banking, seeking information about jobs, obtaining class materials or educational
contents, obtaining driving directions in public transport, and many other purposes. When asked,
smartphone owners described their devices as “helpful” rather than “annoying,” “connecting” rather
than “distracting,” and representing “freedom” rather than functioning as a “leash.” According to a
study done on students, using smartphones during classes hampers the ability to concentrate and
makes academic performance worse (Samaha & Hawi, 2016).
With the increasing number of smartphones, not only the benefits of using them but also the side
effects should be discussed. A new phenomenon is emerging, called phubbing. The word “phubbing”
is derived from two words: “phone” and “snubbing.” It means looking at one’s mobile during real
conversation with another person (Karadağ et al., 2015). Phubbing is also defined as an act of
snubbing the interlocutor in a social setting by looking at one’s phone instead of paying attention
(see http://stopphubbing.com/). Karadağ and colleagues (2015) indicated that phubbing is associated
with mobile addiction and with deprivation in situations of being far from one’s phone; they also
indicated that the mobile phone is used as a tool helping in situations of loneliness, anxiety, and
worry. They distinguished two factors of phubbing: communication disturbance and phone obsession
(Karadağ et al., 2015). A previous study showed that gender can be a moderator of the relationships
between phubbing and mobile phone, short message service (SMS), social media, and Internet
addictions; in the female group, phubbing was found to be related to mobile, SMS, and social media
addictions, whereas in the male group it was associated with Internet and game addictions (Karadağ
et al., 2015). This can be linked with differences in preferences concerning media use. Phubbing also
has an impact on interpersonal relationships and personal well-being (Roberts & David, 2016). It
seems to be very strongly connected with the way of using other tools; Karadağ and colleagues (2015)
suggested that it has certain dimensions such as mobile phone addiction, Internet addiction, or social
media addiction. They suggest that people first become addicted to SMS and social media, which then
leads to mobile addiction, which in turn results in phubbing.
Problematic phone use is seen as a behavioral addiction. Phubbing is an umbrella term covering
three dimensions, one of them being mobile phone addiction. Choliz (2010) found that mobile phone
addiction and phubbing have similar main symptoms of dependence, such as lack of impulse control,
using a mobile to avoid unpleasant moods, having problems because of using a mobile, intensive
online activity, sending a large number of text messages, and devoting a large amount of time to
using the mobile every day.
Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites (for a review, see Błachnio, Prze-
piórka, & Rudnicka, 2013). The terms used in the literature to refer to Facebook dependency are
“Facebook intrusion” (Elphinston & Noller, 2011) or “Facebook addiction” (Andreassen & Pallesen,
2014), which can be defined as excessive involvement in Facebook, disrupting day-to-day activities
and interpersonal relationships (Elphinston & Noller, 2011). The authors mention three phases of
this phenomenon, namely, (1) withdrawal, (2) relapse and reinstatement, and (3) euphoria. People
who are strongly involved in Facebook feel distress when they cannot use it. What is more, they have
unsuccessfully attempted to reduce Facebook use. They also feel a connection with other people who
use Facebook (Elphinston & Noller, 2011).
A large body of studies have been devoted to the relationship between behavioral dependency and
personal traits. Because of the small number of studies on phubbing, our project was eclectic and
intuitive. Our assumptions were based on behavior dependency studies in general. Self-esteem,
loneliness, and satisfaction with life were selected as antecedents for phubbing.
Błachnio and Przepiorka 3

Figure 1. Theoretical model.

The previous study indicated that Internet addiction was related to a low level of self-esteem
(Błachnio, Przepiórka, Senol-Durak, Durak, & Sherstyuk, 2016) and that self-esteem was a negative
predictor of Facebook intensity (Błachnio, Przepiorka, & Rudnicka, 2016) and addictive use of
social media (Hawi & Samaha, 2016).
Some authors have assumed that loneliness is an important determinant of social media use (Ye &
Lin, 2015; Song et al., 2014). Some studies suggest that loneliness can predict Internet addiction
(Özdemir, Kuzucu, & Ak, 2014). Loneliness has been found to be a positive predictor of Facebook
addiction, standard Facebook use, and Facebook entertainment (Błachnio, Przepiorka, Boruch, &
Bałakier, 2016). As indicated by previous results, problematic mobile phone use is associated with
loneliness and depression (Güzeller & Coşguner, 2012).
Satisfaction with life is defined as the global assessment of one’s life. A previous study indicated
that Facebook addiction was negatively associated with satisfaction with life (Błachnio, Przepiorka,
& Pantic, 2016), and another one showed that phubbing was associated with personal well-being
(Roberts & David, 2016).
Our assumptions were based on behavioral dependency studies in general. We tested a model of
associations between phubbing, self-esteem, loneliness, and satisfaction with life, based on the
following hypotheses (Figure 1):

Hypothesis 1: Facebook intrusion enhances phubbing behavior.

Hypothesis 2: Self-esteem is negatively associated with phubbing.
Hypothesis 3: Loneliness is positively associated with phubbing.
Hypothesis 4: Satisfaction with life is negatively associated with phubbing.
Hypothesis 5: Self-esteem is positively related to satisfaction with life.

Method
Participants and Procedure
The participants were 597 Polish mobile users; 67.5% of them were women. The participants’ mean
age was M ¼ 21.22 years (SD ¼ 6.52, range: 16–78).
The snowball sampling procedure was used as a method of reaching a large group of respondents
diverse in terms of social status, education level, Internet literacy, and mobile use proficiency. An
electronic version of the questionnaires was prepared and the link was sent to undergraduate students
4 Social Science Computer Review XX(X)

with a request to post the link on their Facebook walls. The questionnaires were also sent to Face-
book users with a request to spread the message among their Facebook friends. The participants
volunteered for the study and received no monetary reward. They were informed about the anon-
ymity of the study.

Measures
The Phubbing Scale (Karadağ et al., 2015) consists of 10 items. The scale has two factors, with 5
items per each: communication disturbance (e.g., “People complain about my dealing with my
mobile phone,” Cronbach’s a ¼ .81) and phone obsession (e.g., “I feel incomplete without my
mobile phone,” Cronbach’s a ¼ .67). The items are rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale from 1
(never) to 5 (always).
The Facebook Intrusion Questionnaire, developed by Elphinston and Noller (2011), is based on
behavioral addiction components and on a scale measuring phone involvement. It consists of 8 items
(e.g., “I have been unable to reduce my Facebook use”) measuring the relations between Facebook
involvement and eight aspects of behavioral addiction, namely, cognitive salience, behavioral
salience, interpersonal conflict, conflict with other activities, euphoria, loss of control, withdrawal,
as well as relapse and reinstatement. The items are rated on a 7-point Likert-type scale from 1
(strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The items were standardized and then the sum score was
computed. Cronbach’s a was .86.
Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale (SES) as adapted into Polish by Łaguna, Lachowicz-Tabaczek,
and Dzwonkowska (2007). The Rosenberg’s SES contains 10 items rated on a 4-point Likert-type
scale and provides an overall evaluation of a person’s self-esteem (e.g., “I feel that I have a number
of good qualities”). The reliability of the scale (Cronbach’s a) was .73.
The De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale as adapted into Polish by Grygiel, Humenny, Rebisz,
Świtaj, and Sikorska (2013) measures the sense of loneliness. The scale consists of 11 items, such as
“I miss having really close friends.” Six of them are negatively and five positively formulated. The
items are rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 ¼ completely disagree; 5 ¼ completely agree).
Cronbach’s a was .88.
The Satisfaction With Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985) consisting of 5 items
designed to measure global cognitive judgments of satisfaction with life (e.g., “The conditions of my
life are excellent”). The reliability of the scale (Cronbach’s a) was .86.

Results
Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics and correlations between the variables: phubbing, Facebook
intensity, self-esteem, loneliness, and satisfaction with life. We found that neither communication
disturbance nor phone obsession correlated with age. Communication disturbance was positively
related to phone obsession, Facebook intrusion, and loneliness, and negatively to self-esteem and
satisfaction with life, while phone obsession was positively correlated only with Facebook intrusion.
As regards gender differences, women scored higher than men on both factors of phubbing on
communication disturbance, Mwomen ¼ 2.05, SD ¼ 0.73, Mmen ¼ 1.86, SD ¼ 0.70, F(1, 613) ¼
9.370, p ¼ .002, and on phone obsession, Mwomen ¼ 3.06, SD ¼ 0.82, Mmen ¼ 2.73, SD ¼ 0.83, F(1,
613) ¼ 20.634, p < .001.
The proposed research model was tested by means of structural equations for interrelations
between the variables. Using structural equation models, we tested the theoretical model (see
Figure 1) of relations between phubbing, self-esteem, loneliness, and satisfaction with life. The
initial model showed a poor fit, and we attempted to improve it by dropping all insignificant paths
and adding those suggested by modification indices; we included those that made theoretical sense.
Błachnio and Przepiorka 5

Table 1. Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations Between Variables.

Variables M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6

1. Age 21.66 6.52

2. Communication disturbance 1.99 0.73 .03
3. Phone obsession 2.96 0.084 .04 .48***
4. Facebook intrusion 2.89 1.12 .16*** .41*** .38***
5. Loneliness 2.34 0.79 .05 .13*** .08 .15***
6. Self-esteem 2.28 0.44 .14*** .11** .03 .12*** .38***
7. Satisfaction with life 4.20 1.30 .01 .11** .01 .02 .48*** .38***

*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Table 2. Standard Path Coefficients.

Dependent Predictor SPC Z p

Satisfaction with life Self-esteem 0.38 10.26 <.001

Facebook intrusion Self-esteem 0.89 2.04 .042
Satisfaction with life 1.24 1.75 .079
Loneliness 3.29 1.84 .065
Communication disturbance Facebook intrusion 0.41 11.01 <.001
Phone obsession Facebook intrusion 0.37 9.81 <.001
Loneliness Satisfaction 0.46 5.89 <.001
Facebook intrusion 1.86 2.74 .006
Note. SPC ¼ standardized path coefficient.

The structural model was tested using the lavaan package (0.5-23.1097). The values of RMSEA
should be lower than .08 to indicate that the model is well fitted, and optimally they should be lower
than .05 (Konarski, 2010). The comparative fit index (CFI) should be higher than .90 for an
acceptable model and equal to 1.0 for a perfect model (Hu & Bentler, 1998). The Tucker–Lewis
Index (TLI) should range from 0 to 1: the higher the value, the better the fit (Schermelleh-Engel,
Moosbrugger, & Müller, 2003). The goodness-of-fit indices demonstrated that the model was very
well fitted to our data: maximum likelihood w2 ¼ 11.60, df ¼ 6, p ¼ .072, w2/df ¼ 1.93, CFI ¼ .99,
TLI ¼ .98, RMSEA ¼ .04 [.01, .07].
As we can see in Table 2, an increase in the level of self-esteem increases the level of satisfaction
with life and reduces the risk of Facebook intrusion. Low satisfaction with life increases the like-
lihood of Facebook intrusion, but it also increases loneliness. A low level of loneliness contributes to
Facebook intrusion, but a high level of Facebook intrusion leads to an increase in loneliness and
influences both dimensions of phubbing, namely, communication disturbance and phone obsession.

Discussion
The main aim of the study was to analyze the model of relations between phubbing, Facebook
intrusion, self-esteem, loneliness, and satisfaction with life. To the best of our knowledge, this is the
first study to examine such relations. We found that people who had a compulsion to use their phone
during contact with other people more often used Facebook in an excessive way. They also felt more
lonely and scored lower on self-esteem and satisfaction with life.
Our results indicate that women scored higher than men on both factors of phubbing: commu-
nication disturbance and phone obsession. The findings of the present study are consistent with the
6 Social Science Computer Review XX(X)

results obtained by Chiu, Hong, and Chiu (2013) in a study on Taiwanese sample. Even in the
sample of elementary school students mobile phone use was higher in girls (Kim, Lee, & Choi,
2015), and more females in the secondary school (Warzecha & Pawlak, 2017) or college sample
(Deng, Huang, Gui, Niu, & Zhou, 2015) were at risk of mobile phone addiction. Despite having
been obtained by means of different measures of mobile phone addiction, all these results high-
light consistent findings on gender differences. This may stem from the fact that mobile phones
are mostly used for communication; female university students make more phone calls and send
more text messages (Hong, Chiu, & Huang, 2012). As shown in our study, people with a phone
obsession more often use Facebook in problematic ways. This is in line with Karadağ et al. (2015)
who suggested that people become addicted to social media first and that this subsequently leads
to phubbing.
Facebook intrusion is a predictor of phubbing (Hypothesis 1). There are similarity between the
findings of our study, which confirmed that Facebook intrusion was a predictor of communication
disturbance and phone obsession, and those presented by Karadağ et al. (2015). People might use
their mobile phones for Facebook activity.
A low level of satisfaction with life and a low level of self-esteem were predictors of
Facebook intrusion (Hypotheses 2 and 4). These results are consistent with those of a previous
study, in which three groups of Facebook users were compared: normal, intensive, and
addicted (Błachnio, Przepiorka, & Pantic 2016). The Facebook-addicted group was character-
ized by lower levels of both self-esteem and satisfaction with life in comparison with normal
Facebook users.
A low level of loneliness was a predictor of Facebook intrusion, while Facebook intrusion was a
predictor of loneliness (Hypothesis 3). Previous results suggested that for shy people and for those
with low social support Facebook can be a place of compensation for their social problems (Song
et al., 2014). Our results may seem to be unexpected, but one possible explanation is fact that people
who have many friends are probably open in social contact and start to use Facebook. Some of them
change the real contact into online contact via Facebook; they give up off-line interactions and, as a
result, they start to feel lonely. Similar results were obtained by Błachnio, Przepiorka, Boruch, and
Bałakier (2016). Another study (Zhang, Zhou, & Pei, 2015) also revealed that loneliness was a
positive predictor of mobile phone addiction.
A high level of self-esteem turned out to be a predictor of satisfaction with life (Hypothesis
5). The same results were obtained in previous studies (e.g., Bozoglan, Demirer, & Sahin,
2013). A low level of satisfaction with life was, in turn, a predictor of loneliness. This result is
in accordance with other findings (e.g., Musich, Wang, Hawkins, & Yeh, 2015; Bozoglan
et al., 2013).
The current study has certain limitations that should be acknowledged. Firstly, its design was
cross-sectional and does not allow for drawing conclusions about causality. A longitudinal study
would afford a better insight into problematic Facebook use and the development of phubbing.
Secondly, there was imbalance in terms of age and gender, with an overrepresentation of females
and young adults. This makes the findings difficult to generalize. In future studies, examining gender
and age differences in using Facebook and mobile phones would bring new insight into this phe-
nomenon. Thirdly, the data were collected online by means of the snowball procedure, which is not
free from biases (Tyrer & Heyman, 2016). Although we collected the data with these disadvantages
in mind, other research has shown that this procedure is valid (Meyerson & Tryon, 2003) and yields
reliable results (e.g., Blachnio, Przepiorka & Rudnicka, 2016).
Despite these limitations, the present findings may have some important implications. Further
research in this area should include other psychological and cultural variables such as emotional
problems, Internet addiction, or time management. Additionally, our model can be compared
across cultures.
Błachnio and Przepiorka 7

Conclusion
To sum up, our aim was to obtain a comprehensive picture of how phubbing is determined by
Facebook intrusion and some psychological characteristics. The contribution of the present study is
2-fold. Firstly, we have identified the determinants of phubbing understood as a mobile phone
addiction and communication disturbance. Secondly, we have examined the nature of Facebook
use more deeply and identified the antecedents of excessive involvement in Facebook. More pre-
cisely, we tested a model of relations between phubbing, Facebook intrusion, self-esteem, loneliness
and satisfaction with life. We found that Facebook intrusion is a predictor of phubbing, and that a
low level of self-esteem and satisfaction with life can predict Facebook intrusion. Additionally, a
low level of loneliness was a predictor of Facebook intrusion, while Facebook intrusion was a
predictor of loneliness. These relations might shed light on the new social phenomenon called
phubbing and inspire future studies.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or pub-
lication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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Author Biographies
Agata Blachnio, PhD with habilitation, works in Department of Emotion and Motivation Psychology at the
John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. The main areas of scientific interests are focused on psychology of
Internet, psychology of emotions, human behaviors as dishonesty, disloyalty, and academic cheating. Her
hobbies are photography and travels.
Aneta Przepiorka, PhD, is an assistant professor in Department of Emotion and Motivation Psychology at
John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland. She specializes in psychology of the Internet with focus on
online communication and social networking sites. Her interests include also psychology of time and cross-
cultural psychology.