This article will discuss why social media destroys relationships and how to take control back over your relationships.
More than 30 percent of Americans now report using at least one of the many forms of social media.
Some of us use it to organize our families and keep in touch with friends and family across the country.
Others use it to support businesses they may care about. For many others, social media is simply a means of passing the time, or watching television.
In this study , published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, researchers at Oregon State University report that the internet and social media have positive impacts on personal relationships, which makes the results even more puzzling.
In an effort to understand these results, my colleagues and I conducted a series of three studies on social media use, users’ relationship satisfaction, and digital relationship success.
In the first study, more than 100 people in the age range of 18-50 years old completed a survey about their use of social media and their relationship satisfaction
The results showed that those who had more Facebook friends, those who used the social networking site more often, those who were using social media more frequently, and those who were using social media less often had lower relationship satisfaction.
Of course, this had an effect on the participants’ sense of their own relationship satisfaction and it was as if using social media made them feel less satisfied with their relationships.
The results of this first study surprised us. After we read the results of the study, I asked my colleagues what they thought the results meant, and the consensus was: “It must be the engagement rate on Facebook that makes people feel less satisfied with their relationships.”
The assumption was that people felt less satisfied with their relationships because they weren’t engaging with friends and family enough.
So we designed a second study
This study was unique in that we collected data on more than 100 individuals from a Facebook group, or a closed group used by one person, and compared the results to data from a public Facebook group.
The result? We saw no relationship between the number of friends, engagement with Facebook, or emotional support received and relationship satisfaction or Facebook use.
In other words, you don’t need as many friends, and you don’t need to use Facebook that much to be happy in your relationship.
In fact, being connected to many people is more likely to harm than help your relationship. As a doctoral student, I frequently worked with undergraduate students.
Many of my students used Facebook and complained about the way it affected their relationships.
They said that it made them feel lonely and anxious, and that the connections they thought they had with their friends online were actually superficial. This gave me an idea.
What if we investigated how Facebook use changes the way we view our relationships?
In this study , published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, I used survey data from 200 people to ask participants whether they felt happy or sad when they were on Facebook.
The results showed that after users looked at their Facebook friends, they felt more isolated and depressed, especially among users who reported feeling lonely.
In other words, we know that Facebook affects people’s perception of their relationships. Now we are learning that Facebook also affects the ways people perceive their relationships.
In the third study, we collected data from participants in a free online dating website
The purpose of this study was to examine whether users who joined this website after they had joined Facebook experienced relationship success, as measured by comparing users who joined the website during the week preceding the Facebook change with users who joined the website after the Facebook change.
The results showed that users who joined the dating website after the Facebook change felt more rejected than users who joined the website before the Facebook change.
In other words, those who joined the dating website after the Facebook change were more likely to feel depressed.
The fourth study examined the impact of Facebook on the perceived quality of the relationships of college students. College students filled out a survey where they reported how much Facebook use affected their current and future relationships.
The results showed that students who reported that they used Facebook a lot but felt close to their friends and family online experienced stronger relationship satisfaction than students who reported that they used Facebook a little but felt distant from their friends and family.
The conclusion is that the emotional benefits of Facebook use are outweighed by its negative impact on your relationships.It should be clear that Facebook has the potential to have a negative impact on your relationship.
Of course, that’s not the only way Facebook can be used: Perhaps you can use it to keep in touch with old friends, or even find new ones.
But if you spend more time on Facebook or you don’t use it carefully, it may disrupt your relationship. In the process, you may risk harming yourself.
A 2014 study found that Facebook use reduced well-being in midlife.
In other words, not using Facebook may be a more sustainable way to build a strong relationship.
With Facebook, it’s a little bit of everything.
So for people who use it more, not to worry! But, if you use it too much, it could also be a serious problem.
