7 Subtle Ways Facebook Is Destroying Your Relationship
Infidelity comes in many different shapes and sizes. There is the most obvious kind where someone is sneaking around and physically having an affair with someone other than his or her partner. Then there is the emotional kind where you are turning to someone other than your partner to vent about your martial problems, to flirt, and contact them at any hour.
But now there is a new type of affair that is surely to be more common than you might think thanks to social media, and it’s called digital infidelity. It’s much like emotional infidelity except it’s all happening through social media.
Take a look at these eye-opening studies that prove once again you should be very wary of how you and your partner use social networking site.
1. Using Facebook excessively has ties to romantic partner conflict. A doctoral student from University of Missouri School of Journalism found that the more someone is using Facebook then the more likely they will get into conflict with his or her partner. In the study, recipients were asked how often they used Facebook and how much conflict arose because of Facebook. Turns out that high levels of Facebook use can predict terrible outcomes like cheating, breaking up, and even divorce.
2. Your Facebook bragging is doing more harm than good. We get it! You’re in a relationship and you want others to know that you’re not lonely anymore. But updating and bragging constantly about you significant other has been shown to be more about your insecurity than happiness thanks to a recent study.
Another tidbit—a survey found that people are very much annoyed with relationship braggers. When the study‘s participants were asked to rank fictional profiles they said that relationship oversharers were the people they least liked.
3. It’s having a stronger negative effect on young relationships. We have stated before that people who use Facebook a lot are more likely to get into it with their partners, but it’s also having a stronger affect with young couples. A researcher from St. Mary’s University found through a survey that younger couples are more susceptible to letting Facebook get in between them.
4. It increases jealousy. A study has found that Facebook sparks jealousy in a relationship thanks to a number of factors. After giving a survey to 308 college students, researchers found that 19.1 percent get jealous due to being able to see more information of what their partners are doing, 16.2 percent of students flat out said Facebook is a link to jealousy for them, 10.3 percent find it hard to not Facebook stalk their partners, and 7.4 percent said Facebook is ambiguous and therefore created misunderstandings with their partners.
5. Your selfies are making your partner feel less supported. It’s time to really evaluate what you’re sharing! Lead researcher Dr. David Houghton found that relationship partners feel less supported when their partners share more photos of friends and events than family.
6. There is a correlation between Facebook and Divorce. Want a lasting marriage? Stay off of social media sites in general! At least that’s the advice of a study that found that use of social media networks, especially Facebook, can be a predictor of divorce. When looking at populations, they found that a 20 percent increase of Facebook users correlated with a 2.18 percent increase in the divorce rate.
7. Couples on Facebook are more likely to engage in remote infidelity. A depressing study done by researchers at University of Indiana found that many taken people are on Facebook to seek out potential back-burners — people who can be on the sidelines in case their relationship fails one day. The types of people that are often seek out for a digital affair are exes, platonic friends, or strangers people have met while out.