Abstract
This paper addresses the impact of social media on the psychological aspects of relationships and marriages. Psychological aspects of marriages and relationships that are affected by the use of social media are discussed with the aid of various articles. The articles that are used to discuss the topic have been peer-reviewed. A number of articles have been examined and used for the discussion and the position that the authors took on the same acts as the foundation of this discussion. A comparison and contrast of the articles is given below. The strengths and the weaknesses of each article in an attempt to address the impact of the psychological aspects of relations and marriages are discussed in detail. The evidence presented in each of the articles is illustrated.
Social media impact on psychological aspects of relationships and marriage
Introduction
Researchers have been making efforts to conceptualize the diverse impacts that the use of social media has had on relationships, especially marriages.
Most of the literature points to the use of social media as a tool that is psychologically detrimental to marriages. There appears to be lack of concrete empirical research that links the two issues. Furthermore, psychological research has not been able to establish the extent to which social media impacts couples in relationships differently as compared to other users.
This paper explores the research that has been done on the psychological effects that the use of social media has on people in relationships and marriages. The paper analyzes the findings that various researches have come up with in establishing the psychological link between use of social media and the deteriorating of relationships.
It seeks to establish the link between the psychological effect of using social media to relationships and marriages.
This paper has been broken down into four sections, where the first part looks into the general use of various social media sites; the information that is revealed and the psychological implications that may arise from the use, especially among couples. The second section analyzes the research that has been done on specific media networks,
Facebook and Twitter, and the psychological relationships that arise. The paper then closely looks into some of the specific issues that arise with the usage of social media, including jealousy and happiness. The last section then looks into the institution of marriage, its dynamic nature and the impacts the use of social media has have on married people. This, therefore, paper uses existing literature to justify the hypothesis that the use of social media has negative psychological effects on aspects of marriage and other relationships.
General Negative Impacts
It is no secret that every aspect of our lives has become more digitized in nature. Most of the people in the world have various aspects of their lives shared over the internet through the various platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Brake (2014) makes a good analysis of the usage of these platforms that enable people separated by millions of kilometers are able to keep in touch and inform each other the progress of their lives while highlighting the consequences that come with this sharing of information. The author reveals that once people go online, they lose control of their information.
When looked at from the psychological perspective, the use of social media affects the behavior of people once they are offline. This means that in relationships and marriages, the behavior expressed by couples is partly informed by the activity in various social media platforms (Brake, 2014).
In the article by Sokol (2013), it is argued that social media affects the self-image and the self-esteem of people especially to those who use the platform most of their time. He presents it that, when a person spends most of their time chatting in the one or more of the social media sites, they lack the confidence to speak to real people other than their computers or whatever technological device they use. They are not able to express the so much love they write about in the social media when now they have a real person talking to them. It is due to lack of self-confidence and damaged self-esteem (Sokol, 2013). Even in a marriage, Sokol argues that self-esteem is very crucial to the blossoming of such a blessed union.
Suval (2013), in his article, adds that for confident users of the social media, the chances that they are dating or are in a relationship with more than one person is very high. Such people might not see the dangers of having multiple partners. All that they see is they enjoying lifeenjoyment of life. Given that they do not disclose such information to those that they date, it is highly probable that if these people find out and they trusted so much on this personthis person so much, they might choose never to date again. The reason could be the due to psychological trauma that they face. On the other hand, if they develop the mentality that everyone cheats, they might end up having relationships with multiple partners.
New Short-Term Relationships
Drouin & Dibble (2014) brings another perspective of relationships that are born out of the use of social media, noting that such relationships do not last. The authors employ the psychological perspective to explain this situation by noting that people may not reveal all their traits online. Furthermore, the continued use of social media has negative impacts on the behavior of couples, with most of them engaging in acts of suspicion, monitoring, and jealousy.
Such behaviors, according to the author, are clear roads leading to breakups. Brake (2014) goes deep into the criminal activity that mainly targets adults on the internet such as commercial exploitation and cyber-stalking. He, however, correctly points out that research has not focused on the interpersonal harms that come with the usage of social media. Drouin and Dibble (2014) and Brake (2014) present the general use of social networking sites well, but the weakness in both articles is that they fail to focus on specific groups. The consequences they point out cannot apply uniformly to different groups in the society, such as the married and the unmarried people.
Research focusing on specific social networking site (SNS) has been conducted and, despite this research not being conclusive, some important discoveries have been made on the impact of social media use on psychological aspects of relationships and marriage. Twitter and Facebook being the most widely used sites have had researchers looking into them and various relationships have been established.
Unnecessarily Complicated Relationships Due to the Use of Facebook and Twitter
Clayton (2014) conducted a study that sought to identify how the usage of Twitter resulted to in a number of negative interpersonal relationship outcomes. The strength of this research was that it was able to establish an actual relationship between active Twitter use and negative outcomes in interpersonal relationships with a focus being on the married. The results from this research build on the growing body of literature that active use of Twitter leads to negative psychological effects in a relationship, which can be exhibited through an increase in the number of conflicts that are traced back to Twitter.
These conflicts mostly result into cases of breakups and divorce that are not observed to passive users of Twitter. The weakness in Clayton's article is that a generalized variable of "Twitter usage" is used. It fails to point at specific and harmful uses of Twitter since not all activities in Twitter have the potential of having negative results.
Facebook and the effects that it has on couples are similar to the ones highlighted above in the study about Twitter. With the site posting increasing usage among couples especially young ones, Elphinston and Noller (2011) notes that it poses a great potential to complicate relationships.
The strength of the article is the effort the author goes into to describe life on Facebook and the real life while explaining how couples find it difficult to differentiate aspects of their life when in Facebook and when offline. It becomes clear that high levels of Facebook intrusion mostly had psychological effects on couples. These effects were expressed mainly through dissatisfaction in relationships, jealous and surveillances (Muise, Christofides & Desmarais, 2009). The major weakness in Elphinston & Noller's article is the failure of taking into consideration the contribution of extenuating factors in the established relationship. The failure of mentioning such factors compromises the validity of the findings.
Lack of Normal Interactions
Lickerman (2010) also sees the social media excessive use although on the relationship with friends and relatives. He says that, today it is very common to find friends walking together, and each one is busy on their phone. If you observe them keenly, you will notice that they occasionally laugh yet if you dig in deeper into their connection, they do not even say good morning to each other. They connect via the social media. This is a habit that Lickerman says ruins the interactive social nature of humans. People need to talk and not connect in the group via the social media.
Val (2014) indicates that use of social media increases the chances of stress and depression among its users. The two psychological impacts are as a result of various factors. For example Val says that if you take at least four hours into the a social media site just reading about the relationships of others, you will notice that there are things going on in those relationships which are not happening in yours. The moment that you start wishing for such thing is the moment you will begin to experience stress. This will escalate if your partner does not agree with what you want. If you continue to nag about such issues with your partner, then you are likely to fall into depression. Sometimes people just part ways if they realize that they can no longer deal with such issues.
Jealousy and Dissatisfaction in Relationships
Reviewing most of the literature appertaining social media use and the psychological effect to relationships reveals that two aspects commonly rise; jealousy and lack of satisfaction that comes in the form of lack of happiness. Muise et al. (2009,) in the study about the use of Facebook, try to establish whether jealousy in relationships increased as a result of one partner being obsessed online. This study makes a good point of first realizing that there are the inherent and acceptable levels of jealousy that are in relationships. The question that this research answer is whether the usage of Facebook psychologically affects couples such that the levels of jealousy increase. The results of this research went on to build on the growing body of research that links social media to negative occurrences in romantic relationships and marriages.
Women were found to have increased levels of jealousy compared to men when their partners become more indulged in Facebook. The weakness of this article comes in the failure to acknowledge the input of innate individual traits that predispose one to be jealous. Facebook may be a catalyst to an existing jealousy situation in an insecure partner.
The problem in Muise's article is solved by the findings that Utz and Beukeboom (2011) made about social media use. According to them, the issue of whether couples become more jealous when the partners become more and more engaged in Facebook depends on the self-esteem of those involved. From the study, it becomes clear that the psychological effects that social media has on the behavior of couples depend on the esteem of the couples. For the couples with high self-esteem, their partners' involvement in social media and especially Facebook made them happy while individuals with lower self-esteem and who had trust issues were mentally affected by the partners' activity in social media and went on to develop the behavior of monitoring the activity of their partners in Facebook which ultimately resulted into jealousy. This study, therefore, brings an emotional twist to the psychological effects that social media has on couples and by introducing the self-esteem factor, the results become more believable.
Impacts on Marriage as an Institution
Marriage as an institution differs from other kinds of relationships in the society especially due to the obligation to behave in certain ways towards their partners. These expectations spill over to the area of social media usage by the individuals. According to Williams, Sawyer and Ahlstrom (2012), some of the major foundations of marriage are being open, sharing and talking out. The use of many of the social media platforms means that some level of privacy by users is achieved, and this has the potential of psychologically impacting the relationships.
The strength of this article is the focus it has on marriages. It uses the basic foundations of marriage to explain its position, and this adds more weight to the results. The weakness of the article is that it does little to explain issues in marriage from the psychological perspective. The authors base their major arguments on the socially set belief systems but fail to apply the psychological aspect. When one of the partners became more involved into online activity and tended to ignore the other, a feeling of being excluded rises. This psychological effect comes with the rise in conflicts that such a couple would experience. Another aspect in the relationship between married couples is that they are expected to share and talk whenever something bothers them. When one of the partners prefers to go into Facebook or Twitter to spill out their thoughts, the other partner is likely to sense mistrust and the inability to share.
Despite marriage being central to most adults' lives, the rates of divorce have been reported to be on the increases (Stevenson & Wolfers, 2009). The biggest strength of this article is the kind of analysis that the author does on the traditional causes of divorce which results to a realization that social media is fast becoming a predisposing factor to divorce. This, therefore, builds on the body of literature that attaches negative outcomes to marriages, and these outcomes can be psychologically explained. In a study done to establish the link between the use of social networking sites and negative interpersonal relationship outcomes, it was found that Facebook-related conflicts are a common occurrence for active social media users (Clayton, Nagurney & Smith, 2013). Social media, without a doubt, has some psychological effects on marriages, and these are seen through issues such as emotional and physical cheating, not forgetting the increased divorce rates. The weakness in both articles is the lack of a clear psychological explanation to the issue of divorce. The authors could have done more in analyzing the predisposing factors to divorce from the psychological perspective.
From these findings, I have come up with a hypothesis that the use of social media has a negative psychological effect on aspects of marriage and other relationships. Through the studies highlighted above, it is clear that when one or both marriage partners become overly involved in social media, the response of the other partner towards them changes. Couples are therefore psychologically affected such that they begin to exhibit negative traits such as jealousy and being unhappy. A link has also been established between breakups and divorce to social media. The literature I have reviewed has further cleared my view on this topic. I have established that there is a lack of literature that explicitly focuses on the psychological aspect of social media use among couples. This is the gap that I would like to fill through successfully answering the study question.
Conclusion
This paper examines the psychological impact of social media into relationships and marriages by looking into four aspects. The first part analyzes the general patterns of social media use among couples and then looks into Facebook and Twitter as the specimen to analyze the consequence of the usage. The paper then looks analyzes marriage as an institution and the danger that couple found them in when using social media. Despite the extensive nature of studies done on the relationship between social media and negative outcomes in relationships, the psychological perspective top this is still lacking. This is the gap that this paper ultimately plans to cover by offering a more concrete evidence of how social media impacts psychological aspects of relationships and marriage.
Cecilia, what are your thoughts on future avenues for research (see the grading rubric)? What areas need further study, why do they need further study, and how would you approach studying them?