During the first year-ish of the pandemic, I counted down the minutes until I could crash into bed. But every night, as depleted as I felt, I stayed awake to indulge in a guilty pleasure best enjoyed alone: an hour of TV and my phone.
So recently, when my husband’s New Year’s resolution coaxed him into bed at the same time I turned in, I was grumpy.
I assumed he would have opinions about what to watch during my sacred solo time. And what if he wanted to make out when I felt like passing out? Admittedly, I felt selfish about wanting to just lie there, streaming PEN15 and scrolling Twitter.
Conventional wisdom tells us technology is bad. Too much screen time disrupts our sleep and disturbs our focus. Casual social media use can turn into less healthy doomscrolling. And research points to potential negative effects of technology on relationships.
Take for instance, the phenomenon of “technoference,” or interruptions in couple interactions caused by technology use. Maybe it’s one person talking to another while they’re typing an email, or your partner venting about their day while you mindlessly scroll Instagram.
Not surprisingly, a 2019 study of 173 couples in Computers in Behavior found that this type of behaviour can have a significant negative impact on mood and how we feel about our relationships.
I can relate. When stay-at-home social distancing orders had us spending all day, every day together, my husband’s phones—yes, there are two—were always around: chirping ESPN notifications at dinner, lighting up in his pocket, demanding an email response, even if we were in the middle of a conversation or trying to get out the door for a neighborhood stroll.
I started to think of his phones as unwanted third (and fourth) partners in our marriage. But did I tell him that’s how I felt? If you count my animated eye rolls and barely audible, “Here we go again,” when he reached for his phone, then yes.
But contrary to the technical interference in my relationship, some researchers think technology has been undeservedly criticized when it comes to intimate connection. And, with a little self-awareness, our devices have the potential to bring us closer to our partners.
That’s why we consulted a couple of experts who specialize in the effects of technology on relationships. Read on for their practical tips on how to prevent tech from destroying intimacy—without giving up your devices, naturally.
1. Try to establish healthy tech boundaries.
“Technology was a connector, refuge, and even lifeline for most of us during the pandemic,” Michelle Drouin, PhD, psychology professor at Purdue University, writes in her recently released book Out of Touch: How to Survive an Intimacy Famine. But pandemic or not, there’s a pitfall to our ubiquitous connection: the technoference we mentioned earlier.
These technological interruptions in our face-to-face interactions—like when one partner’s phone is at the dinner table and the other really wishes it wasn’t—can have a lasting impact. “Even if it’s only a momentary experience, it can feel like rejection,” Dr. Drouin tells SELF. “It sends a signal to your partner that you’re choosing your phone over them.”
The best thing to do if technoference is a hot button issue in your relationship? You guessed it: Talk to your partner. But Dr. Drouin emphasizes that we should avoid threats and accusations. Instead, try to use “I” statements. For example, “I feel sad when I’m lying next to you but I’m not the focus of your attention,” rather than, “You’re always on your phone and it’s ruining our relationship.”
Obviously, the latter is more likely to cause the phubber (the phone snubber) to feel attacked and less open to adjusting their tech habits. Conversely, approaching the subject in a nonthreatening way can help you and your partner set tech boundaries that work for both of you. Think putting phones away at dinner or bedtime, or setting time limits for social media scrolling.
And it’s worth noting that phones don’t interfere in every relationship. “There are some couples who are perfectly fine that they’re both on the couch scrolling on technology while watching a show,” says Dr. Drouin. In other words, if screens aren’t preventing anyone from getting their needs met, then keep calm and scroll on.
2. Learn to read between the (text message) lines.
For the past couple of months, my husband and I have been going to bed and waking up together. Still, once the day starts, our communication is almost exclusively electronic: a texted grocery list, a reminder about which kid needs to be picked up, a scheduling confirmation for the coming weekend.
Mimi Winsberg, MD, a Stanford-trained psychiatrist and the chief medical officer at Brightside Health, calls texting “the lingua franca of love”—meaning that texting has become our primary form of communication, not just with friends and colleagues, but with our romantic partners.
And yet, Dr. Winsberg, who spent three years as Facebook’s resident psychiatrist, tells SELF, “You can be the most tech-savvy person in the world, but our brains are still catching up to the way we’re using technology in our closest relationships. We have a lot to learn.”
In her recently released book, Speaking in Thumbs: A Psychiatrist Decodes Your Relationship Texts So You Don’t Have To, Dr. Winsberg draws on 25 years of clinical experience and research—her own and others’—to help people understand how texting impacts our relationships. Why texting?
Dr. Winsberg argues that each person has ways they want to express and experience love, and since double-thumbing phone messages has generally become the dominant mode of communication in modern relationships, those preferences clearly manifest in texts.
Borrowing terminology from Dr. Gary Chapman’s popular The 5 Love Languages, Dr. Winsberg’s book introduces five text love languages: compliments, riffing (rapid-fire banter), spoon-feeding (sending an interesting read or meme, or little personal updates), nooking (sweet nothings, like “XO,” or sexting), and nudging (reminders that you’re thinking of them).
“I think it’s helpful for people to know how they like to communicate and be communicated with,” says Dr. Winsberg. That way, partners are more likely to feel like they’re getting their emotional needs met. If you can’t decipher each other’s preferences from your text thread, have a chat.
For example, you could say, “I’m not very good at chatting during the workday, but I love a good text sesh in the evening,” or “I’d love a goodnight text.” Then meet your partner where they are—if they prefer compliments, keep them sincere, or if they’re into riffing, set aside five minutes when you’re both normally free and see if you can make them LOL.
3. Consider doing a self-diagnostic.
We can learn a lot by scrolling back over our texts and looking at how we interact with our partners. According to Dr. Winsberg, our texting history “can provide an electronic health record” of sorts for our relationship. Recently, I read through my text exchanges with my husband.
His “out of Ziplock bags” text probably didn’t count as riffing, just like my “Are you coming?” could hardly be mistaken for sexting, given the context. In fact, I found little evidence that the two people communicating were even in love, unless you count the occasional red heart emoji.
Dr. Winsberg writes in her book, “While messages may inevitably become more utilitarian in this way over the course of a relationship, there are good reasons to suggest that affectionate exchanges can help a couple maintain their bond.”
After a year of living in constant contact (with kids), browsing our history was just the advice my husband and I needed. It inspired us to start sprinkling in texts like “I appreciate you” or a simple heart-eyes emoji—small acts of affection that have been satisfying to both send and receive.
Shanhong Luo, PhD, relationship researcher and professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, tested a similar hypothesis in a 2015 study published in Computers in Human Behavior titled “Can texting improve romantic relationships?” And according to her research, it can. “If people send a positive text message to their partner, either something generic or something nice about the partner, it helps to combat the downward satisfaction pattern,” Dr. Luo tells SELF.
In other words, we all know it’s common for a relationship to have an early honeymoon phase followed by a slow fade in attraction over time. A super doable antidote? Send nice text messages.
4. Use evening screen time to your advantage.
Spending quality time with your significant other before bed, specifically, may offer a beneficial bonding boost, according to Dr. Drouin. And—good news for me–together tech-time totally counts.
In a 2021 study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Dr. Drouin found that more than half of the 289 participants reported going to bed at the same time as their partner, while 27% said they usually didn’t, but wanted to. In her book, Dr. Drouin writes, “Simply going to bed with a romantic partner predicted bedtime satisfaction. In turn, increased bedtime satisfaction led to more sexual, relationship, and life satisfaction.”
If that sounds like too big a pivot because, like me, you value your solo screen time at night, take heart: “It doesn’t matter what couples are doing together, as long as they’re doing it right before bed,” Dr. Drouin says.
For example, she says that partners don’t necessarily need to have sex, or even long conversations, to bond. “Sometimes watching a movie or show together can get you to a positive place in terms of your relationship satisfaction,” she tells SELF.
What if Netflix isn’t your jam? No problem, Dr. Drouin’s study found all that’s needed for activities to be “pro-bonding” for couples is that they’re experienced together—which is good news for pairs who prefer playing video games or listening to a podcast (or even side-by-side scrolling) over streaming shows.
The caveat: If you do opt for tech over touch at night, be cognizant of blue light before sleep. According to the CDC, exposure to blue light can make it difficult to fall and stay asleep. But a study in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine suggests that TV is less likely to interfere with sleep than more interactive devices like mobile phones, which are more physiologically and cognitively stimulating—plus, since TVs aren’t typically as close to your face as phones and tablets, your eyes may get less blue light exposure.
5. Make incremental autocorrection the goal.
Becoming aware of technology’s impact on our closest relationships is critical, says Dr. Luo, but revamping our tech habits wholesale may seem too daunting. That’s why she encourages couples to focus on small acts of romantic upkeep. “For houses, cars, and relationships, regular maintenance makes it possible to sustain satisfaction,” she says.
For me this little-by-little mindset helps. During the day I now make an effort to notice when I’m mindlessly scrolling (hello check-out lines and parking lots), stop myself, and send some e-love to my man instead. Even if love looks like a meme of Taylor Swift making heart hands. “It’s easy to do,” Dr. Luo says. “Remembering to do it is a big first step.”
As for his phone mistresses, I also finally took a deep breath, promised myself to reach for “I statements”—even though barking criticisms felt more emotionally authentic—and talked to him about how it feels when his phones come to dinner.
Lately, he’s been leaving them behind at dinnertime more often than not and charging them overnight in the kitchen so they’re out of reach when we go to bed. And he’s also going to ditch his personal phone in favor of keeping only one phone for business and pleasure.
When nighttime rolls around, I’ve taken Dr. Drouin’s advice about conversation and negotiation. “People don’t like being forced to do something,” Dr. Drouin tells SELF. “The best thing to do is ask your partner, ‘What does your ideal bedtime look like?’” If one person prefers streaming a Netflix series, say, and another wants to get busy, consider splitting the week and meeting your partner in the middle.
I’ve finally come around to his crashing my bedtime ritual, too. Though he never got into PEN15, we agree on Ozark and the idea of lights out by 10. Now, once we find the movie or show for the night, we snuggle up to watch it (usually with our phones out of reach). I’ve actually started to prefer his armpit to the pillow I used when he wasn’t lying next to me.
Maybe the next time I conduct a post-mortem of my marital text thread, I’ll find evidence of more than the groceries we lack. But I’m not expecting a bolt of romantic lightning either. “As with most things in science, a gradual synthesis is much more likely than a great leap,” Dr. Drouin says. “So couples may find that just like resentment can increase over time as phones interfere with interactions, positive feelings can also build as they take small steps together.”