A new University of Baylor study finds more and more people are "cheating" on their friends with cellphones, not only running the risk of damaging relationships but also suffering from greater instances of depression and lower overall rates of life satisfaction.

Known as "phubbing" or phone snubbing, Digital Trends reports the act is now described as a "real epidemic in the United States" and is specifically defined as "the act of snubbing someone in a social setting by looking at your phone instead of paying attention."

Published in the "Computers in Human Behavior" journal, Professor James Robert and his team of researchers interviewed 453 adult respondents over two separate experiments.The first experiment involved 308 participants and responses went a long way in aiding researchers come up with a nine-item scale indicating instances of phubbing.

The second experiment was composed of 145 respondents and delved deeper into the phenomenon, with couples being asked to specifically identify side-effects they've personally encountered in their relationships.

In the end, 46.3 percent of all interviewees reported they had personally experienced the indignation of phubbing at the hands of their partner and 22.6 percent of them added that it ultimately led to issues within the relationship.

"We found that the ones that reported higher partner phubbing fought more with their partner and were less satisfied with their relationship than those who reported less phubbing," said Roberts.

Apparently, fed up with feeling ignored long enough, some have launched, as Yahoo reports, the StopPhubbing.com website, a site that bills itself to "spreading awareness about the behavior."

Site creators add, "if phubbing were a plague, it would decimate six Chinas." With that in mind, the site has a space where you can upload images of your friends phubbing, called "the Phubbing Hall of Shame."

Manhattan-based clinical psychologist Joseph Cilona has seen it all and doesn't seem to think things will be getting better anytime soon.

"As the use of smartphones continues to proliferate, negative feelings such as anger, hurt, or jealousy around a significant other's attention to and engagement with their phone has become a commonplace and often serious problem for many," he said.