Daily technoference, technology use during couple leisure time, and relationship quality

ABSTRACT

The landscape of couple leisure time has shifted to include and, in some relationships, rely upon technology use. Technology has the potential to intrude upon face-to-face interactions and quality time together – i.e., technoference, phubbing. However, it is also likely that couples engage in shared technology use, which could lead to bonding. In the current work, we examined one’s own, one’s partner’s, and shared technology use during couple time across 10 days and the potential impacts on couple-time satisfaction, conflict, and relationship quality. We utilized data from 145 couples who completed a baseline online survey and 10 days of daily online surveys concerning leisure time spent together with their partner and their technology use. Multilevel mediational modeling revealed within-person associations between own and partner technology use with daily leisure satisfaction and leisure conflict. Small, but significant within-person indirect effects on daily relationship quality through leisure satisfaction and conflict were also found for own and partner technology use. In other words, results implied a pathway where technology use impacts one’s satisfaction with and conflict during time spent together, and then this (dis) satisfaction and conflict impacts daily relationship quality. Although shared technology use was also a significant predictor, its effects were not robust.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study cannot be shared with the public due to our protection of human subjects agreements with participants. The de-identified data and analyses were examined by the reviewers during the peer review process. The survey items, analysis syntax, results output (as well as a table of the unstandardized estimates, standardized estimates, standard errors, and confidence intervals for the main models 1 and 5) can be found here: https://osf.io/tu8yn/

Notes

1. A part of the data was presented previously as a research poster at the National Council on Family Relations Conference in November 2018, titled “Daily technoference, technology use during couple leisure time, and relationship satisfaction.” https://www.ncfr.org/index.php/ncfr-2018/session/poster-session-4.

2. Although participants were instructed to complete 10 days, some participants completed more than 10 days. Within a 14-day period, 23 participants completed 11 days and 4 participants completed 12 days. All days of data provided by participants were included in our analyses.

Additional information

Funding

Data collection for this work was supported by an internal grant from Illinois State University to the first author.