CNBC: This 30-second task will improve your marriage, according to a Stanford University psychiatrist

While the discourse surrounding social media’s negative impacts on mental health tends to focus on teens, excessive screen time may be harming adults and their marriages, too.

That’s according to psychiatrist Anna Lembke. As the chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic, she’s seen firsthand the harmful effects that compulsive use of social media, online shopping and video games can have on a relationship.

Americans spend an average of five hours a day on their smartphones, according to a Reviews.org survey of 1,000 adults. One in four use their phone during dinner and 38 per cent say they check their phone while on a date.

This “digital drug” addiction, as Lembke calls it, can create distance between two partners in a relationship.

“People really disappear when they’re on their devices and are not able to be fully present for the people who love them,” Lembke says.

But breaking the grip that your phone has on you isn’t impossible. The “Dopamine Nation” author has found that patients who are struggling in their relationship often benefit from doing one thing — and it only takes 30 seconds.

“Delete the app that you spend more time on than you would like and make a commitment to staying off of that app for 30 days,” she says.

‘In the first two weeks, you’ll crave it’

Not allowing yourself to use an app you were probably checking dozens of times a day will be uncomfortable, Lembke warns. But the pay-off is worth it.

“In the first two weeks, you’ll crave it and you’ll miss it, and your brain will tell you all the reasons why it’s not a project worth doing,” she says. “If you can make it about 14 days, you might notice that you actually don’t miss it and that you find you’re feeling better without it.”

Marriages suffer when couples stop feeling heard and seen by each other. And while smartphones didn’t create the experience of having a distant or dismissive partner, they did make it easier to be both.

“Often the husband is spending way too much time on video games or online pornography,” Lembke says.

“For women, it tends to be online shopping or social media. The sheer amount of time spent consuming those forms of digital media to the exclusion of spending time with their partner (is a problem).”

How active someone is on their phone can leave a person feeling like their partner has a “double life,” Lembke says.

“There is a level of deception about that activity which erodes trust and intimacy,” she says.

“They’re doing one thing online and another thing in the rest of their lives so there’s a sense of betrayal.”

By deleting an app that you find yourself compulsively using, you’re creating space for your partner and giving yourself the opportunity to be more present.