It is not your own phone scrolling that hurts the work environment. It is watching your colleagues do it.

Your own phone scrolling during a coffee break? That does not seem to be the problem. Your colleague's phone scrolling during a coffee break? That might be.

This asymmetry sits at the center of a doctoral thesis by psychologist Per Martinsson at the University of Gothenburg, which explores what happens when smartphones replace conversation during work breaks. The thesis, defended in March 2026, draws on 25 in-depth interviews and two survey studies involving approximately 1,700 working adults in Sweden.

The concept behind the research: phubbing

Martinsson's work builds on the concept of phubbing, a portmanteau of "phone" and "snubbing." It describes the act of prioritizing one's phone over people who are physically present. The term has been studied in personal relationships, where it has been linked to reduced relationship satisfaction and lower quality of face-to-face conversation. But few researchers had examined phubbing in the workplace, despite the fact that most working adults spend their breaks alongside colleagues.

Interviews: phones as social barriers

The qualitative portion of the research involved interviews with 25 electricians and healthcare professionals. Across both professions, a consistent theme emerged: mobile phones are frequently perceived as a social barrier during breaks. When colleagues scroll, conversation dwindles. Breaks that once served as informal bonding time become quiet, fragmented, and individualized.

But the interviews also revealed nuance. Some participants noted that phones are not purely isolating. Sometimes colleagues look at videos together, search for information collaboratively, or share content from their screens. And for some workers, phone use during breaks reflects a genuine need for recovery, a way of withdrawing from social demands rather than snubbing anyone specifically.

Survey data: the other person's phone matters

The two survey studies told a more quantitative story. Workers who perceived more phubbing from their colleagues also reported a poorer psychosocial work environment on multiple dimensions: emotional support, practical support, trust, sense of community, and engagement with their work and organization.

The striking finding is directional. One's own phone use during breaks was not associated with these outcomes. The negative association appeared only in relation to how much phubbing a person perceived from others. In other words, people do not seem to register their own scrolling as socially harmful, but they do register when colleagues choose their phones over conversation.

This pattern held across both sub-studies: one focused on electricians (approximately 800 respondents), the other drawn from a representative sample of Sweden's working population (roughly 900 respondents).

Correlation, not causation

Martinsson is careful about causal claims. The survey data showed a cross-sectional association, not a longitudinal trajectory. When the researchers tracked a subset of participants over a one-year period, they did not find evidence that phone use drove a deterioration in the work environment over time. The causality could run in either direction: people in already-weaker work environments might be more likely to perceive phubbing, or phubbing might contribute to the weakening.

Disentangling these possibilities will require longer follow-up periods and potentially experimental or quasi-experimental designs.

Generational fault lines

The research also surfaced generational differences. Younger employees used their phones more during breaks and were more likely to consider it acceptable. Older employees were more likely to view phone use during shared break time as exclusionary. These differing norms mean that what one worker perceives as normal recovery behavior, another perceives as a social slight.

Martinsson suggests that the critical skill is situational: being able to read whether a given group considers phone use during breaks acceptable, and adjusting accordingly.

Reflection over regulation

The practical takeaway is deliberately modest. Martinsson does not recommend banning phones during breaks or imposing new workplace rules. Instead, he hopes the findings encourage reflection and dialogue: conversations within teams about how they want to spend shared time and what kind of social environment they want to create together.

That may sound soft for a research finding, but it matches the complexity of what the data actually show. The phone is not inherently the problem. The problem is the gap between one person's expectations of social connection and another person's choice to scroll instead. Closing that gap requires conversation, not policy.