Social Media and Romantic Relationships: How Does It Work?

06.07.2018

Do you ever wonder how does social media affect relationships? People spend so much time in social media networks nowadays that it just can’t go unnoticed. Many people navigate their communication via different social media services. Without any doubt, there are many social media effects on relationships you should keep in mind. From one perspective, social media might undermine romantic relationships and cause a mutual alienation of the partners. But on the other hand, romantic relationships might benefit from partners’ regular messaging and social media communication. Read the following info to know how social media affects relationships.

Social Media Destroys Relationships: Myth or Reality?

You either enjoy texting or real face-to-face communication. Many people prefer live communication to texting via messengers and chats. Certain sociological and psychological studies suggest that relying on social media in communication may cause alienation and seclusion from society. People who communicate more in social media tend to become less emotional, fail to express themselves properly, and lack understanding, compassion, and sympathy.

Non-Verbal Communication

Social media and relationships are tightly connected because lovers spend a lot of time texting each other via messengers or on Facebook. Many claim that social media ruins relationships because a conversation in Telegram or Messenger lacks non-verbal means of communication. What is non-verbal communication? It is all means of communication besides talking. You may be surprised but your body, tone of voice, mimics, and gestures communicate around 50% of the information you share. What you actually say amount only to half of what you really communicate to another person. However, using online messengers and social media you express yourself only through words, letters, and symbols. A person you’re texting with doesn’t hear your voice or see your face unless you’re using a camera and a mic.

Moves and Attention

Additionally, your moves, as well as the way you focus and pay attention, are different depending on how you communicate. For example, sitting in front of another person in a restaurant you might notice that this person cannot sit still and always moves on a chair or checks the watch. Knowing this, you may conclude that a person is bored or nervous. You’re not able to reach this conclusion based on the information from texting. Or you can be absolutely sure that a person you’re speaking to dedicates 100% of attention to you during a live face-to-face conversation. But, when you text a person, this person can be occupied with pretty much anything besides texting you back.

No Physical Contact

Talking about social media ruining relationships, it’s important to keep in mind that people have no real contact while using messengers for communication purposes. However, it is crucial for lovers to be in the presence of each other, touch hands, kiss in order to experience the romantic passion and feel being closer to each. That is an inseparable part of true romantic relationships. Though many other life matters migrate to the web, partners would never trade live face-to-face communication for a social media conversation. That is simply because real life contact allows you to express yourself to the fullest and have a better contact with your partner.

What Else

Various research materials and psychology studies indicate that social media affecting relationships is definitely a striking feature of modernity. Statistics data show that more and more people find it convenient to date online or maintain constant social media contact with their close ones.

Though social media messengers save time and are very helpful in providing us with a constant ability to contact anyone, they make us less encouraged to meet people. However, partners in relationships can only be as happy as much time they spend together. Different life coaches and relationship counselors emphasize how important it is for partners to actually spend time together. Social media and romantic relationships can co-exist for the benefit of them both. Among many other things, social media can not only make it possible for partners to know each other better but help them stay in touch. Partners can spend all of their free time being together. However, it’s impossible for them to always be together. But, with social media and thanks to texting, partners in relationships can keep each other a company at work or being on the move.

Social media can also make it easier for partners to start a romantic relationship in the first place. It works like online dating with partners getting information about each other through their social media profiles. You’re able to get a taste of a person by looking at his or her activities in social media. For example, you may come across a friend on your friends list who’s into the same music that you’re.

Positive Effects of Social Media on Relationships

Constant Contact

With social media, you can stay in touch with your romantic partner anywhere at any given time. This is impossible to do providing you don’t use social media. You can share photos, videos, and links via social media messengers always staying informed about what happens in your partner’s life.

Saves Time and Money

Technology saves your time and money. Social media is a technology. You can call your partner for free or have a conversation without spending time to get yourself ready and meet publicly. Therefore, social media makes communication more practical providing you with wonderful opportunities.

Socialization

Social media makes your relationships more public allowing your friends and relatives know more about your partner. It is a good way to introduce your friends to your partner and familiarize your partner with your friends.

Monitoring

With social media, you can always be informed about your partner’s activities. Considering the fact that partners in relationships often share the same interests, one partner might just as well be interested in what the other partner is up to.

Negative Effects of Social Media on Relationships

There are many negative effects of social media on relationships with which you need to be concerned. Many people may suffer from alienation losing the ability to value live face-to-face communication. In other words, a more frequent social media communication leaves less space for a live interaction with other people.

No Feeling

You cannot take a hand, give a high five, hug or kiss a person online. You cannot smile back, smell, clap your hands, enjoy a meal together. In other words, you are deprived of the ways to actually feel the presence of another person. A lot has been said about how social media destroys relationships. Most of this critique is expressed from a sociological or psychological perspective. Now, psychology deals with emotions and psychologists indicate that social media interferes with a basic human ability and a need to communicate.

People communicate not only on a verbal level but on emotional and psychological levels as well. People who tend to rely more on messengers at the cost of live interaction have the decreased levels of the so-called emotional intelligence. In other words, it becomes harder for such people to understand how others feel. Therefore, social media leads to real-life miscommunication and the lack of emotional connection which, logically, brings forth misunderstanding, confusion, and even hatred.

Taking People for Granted

It takes a second to send a message on Facebook. You can text whoever you want, when you want, and where you want. It kind of makes you think that any of your contacts is always available at your command. There are certain people you write to but never see. Well, why bother, when you can always write them, right? You can even write your lover instead of calling or call instead of a quick meeting for a coffee. Eventually, you start to value people less because neither you, nor them actually put something into the communication.

In a real-life face-to-face conversation, partners spend their time, give their attention, even their money and physical effort for the sake of meeting each other. The amount of input provides you with the feeling of content and this feeling is validated seeing as how you actually sacrifice something. That doesn’t happen in messengers and a habit to communicate more via messengers causes people to view the nature of a conversation in the wrong light.

Possibilities

Always go for something that is original in order to get the best experience. Social media communication is a second-hand experience. It is way better to look for a meaningful conversation in real life, not in the digital world of the internet. Virtual communication comes closer and closer to copy and imitate reality. No matter what scientists will do in the future, one thing is certain, though, and that is the fact that reality is always going to prevail. Reality is all that matters, to be honest. And it gives you so many more possibilities. For example, meeting with your partner, you can suddenly decide to ride a bicycle or spontaneously go for walk in the park. Even if you do not have something to talk about, you can just spend time together and be happy.

Keep in mind the most important lesson about close personal relationships you can get: it doesn’t matter whether you have something to communicate or not, sometimes all it takes is just to be right next to each other and spend time together, even silently. Social media communication doesn’t allow you to do things together, unless you’re playing videogames, and that is how social media affects relationships negatively. Moreover, you cannot feel the presence of another person virtually just the same as you cannot enjoy a beautiful sunset with mutual pleasure. Social media made people think they can do the same things online they do in life but real experience will always prevail over virtual experience because it gives you more possibilities.

As you can see, there are fewer positive effects of social media on relationships than negative effects. And that is evidently so because to actually spend time together with the one you have strong feelings for is better than to communicate via social media. Though social media can help you meet new people, never ever trade live communication for a virtual one. This way you’ll be more humane because the need of physical contact that comes with all its benefits is a crucial human need. No one can do without it. You may use social media for work purposes or to maintain contact when there are no other means to do that. But, always go for what’s truly real when it concerns romantic relationships and stay closer to your roots by being real, not virtual.