You’re trying to talk to your man or lady and they glance down at their notifications or keep scrolling through their feed. They answer you, so they’re somewhat paying attention, but you just can’t help but feel you’re the second-choice activity here. There’s just one little example of how social media slowly slips into relationships and starts to rot them bit by bit.
Add in the accessibility of seeing and talking to whoever else you want, disappearing messages, posts or likes you don’t agree on, and a whole other slew of things and it’s no surprise to see social media sabotaging relationships across the globe. We know social media holds power over our lives, but it’s doing more than distracting you. Social media is slowly killing relationships – here’s why.
1. Social media fosters superficial connections.
That like you gave to your friend who lives across the country may seem like you’re connecting and complimenting them, but all you did was press a button for about half a second. The craziest part is that we tend to blow up these superficial connections in our minds to make them more important than the real-life connections we have sitting in front of us. Simply putting your phone on the table gives the people around you the unconscious observation that you’re not fully engaged, creating a non-verbal cue that can lower the quality of your interactions, making conversation shallower and less satisfying. A recent survey by Pew Research found that 51% of couples say their partner is sometimes distracted by their phone when speaking with them and 40% say they are bothered by how much time their person spends on their phone. One study even found that using your phone during a meal with others leads to a noticeable decrease in your enjoyment of that meal! Talk about taking away from the joys in life.
If you want to know just how important being social and present are, check out another post we made called “Why Being Social Is More Important Than Being Smart.”
2. Too many partners look for validation online.
Sadly, many individuals’ measure of self-worth is now connected to how many likes or views they get on their posts. More is better, right? Well, not for your mental health. When someone hits that like button on your photo or post, your brain gets a hit of dopamine while making you feel satisfaction. The problem is that this feeling is fleeting and you’re going to need more likes to keep it going. That comment you posted or received may make you feel relevant, but it’s just a façade in your mind and will disappear from most peoples’ feeds within the hour. This issue expands in relationships because we tend to get our confidence from the superficial social media likes of others and not from within ourselves or our partners. This could put a focus on always posting something eye-catching, which can easily give your significant other the impression that you care more about what random other people think about you than them. There’s nothing wrong with posting online, but if you’re taking more time to snap and post a pic than you are talking to your boyfriend or girlfriend about your relationship, then there’s an issue.
3. Social media makes everyone else’s grass greener.
You’ve probably heard the phrase, “The grass is always greener on the other side…” or at least, it looks that way if you’re in your yard. Social media is the king of this quote. Nowadays, with the quality of filters and AI, we don’t even know what’s real out there. There are whole Instagram and TikTok pages created by a human who is actually made by AI, with millions of followers! I can’t… That brings me to comparative bias. This psychological term describes the tendency of social media users to compare themselves unfavorably to others based on posts. If you’re comparing yourself to the tailored and edited pics of famous wannabes, you are comparing yourself to a fantasy world! The truth is that no one is going to be posting the mental breakdown they had in bed last night, the big pimple they got on their chin, or how yesterday they argued with their spouse for thirty minutes about dirty dishes. Instead, you get a picture-perfect relationship couple that travels the world and looks beautiful together. It’s. Not. True!
I’ll give you a fabulous real-world example. Two years ago, I met a beautiful young yoga teacher who told me herself that her Instagram was “fire.” She had thousands of followers and beautiful travel pictures, so when she met her “prince charming,” he blew up on her account and they looked like the most amazing intercontinental couple. The thing is, I knew this girl. I knew how she would throw a fit if her boyfriend didn’t want to do exactly what she wanted at all times. I knew how she got into nasty fights with his sister over her selfishness. And, I knew how tortured this poor guy was – sure, he was in love, but man did she run that ship. You’d never know it on their social media though, but I’m telling you, know you have nothing to be jealous of from the other yard. That grass is turf.
4. Social media chats encourage miscommunication.
If you’re in a long-distance relationship, social media may a help maintain a part of that connection. The issue arises when we focus heavily on messages, threads, and texts to depict things that our faces would otherwise say. Around 60 to 70% of our communication is completely nonverbal, meaning our body language, tone, gestures, and facial expressions say more than our words. When you take this out, you’re left with emojis, GIFs, and great memes, but they’re not the same thing.
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5. FOMO adds to real-life anxiety and stress.
The more time young people spend on their phones, the higher levels of anxiety and depression are found one year later. While teens are more easily affected, adults are always living through the Fear of Missing Out or FOMO. Since social media is just a highlight reel, it makes it easy to see your life or relationship as boring compared to what’s out there. The thing is, this brings us back to number three and how the grass always looks greener out there, but it’s not so. Instead, you’ll get into your head or, worse, risk everything you have for something else that may not be real or reachable in the first place.
Check out: How to quickly develop social skills as an introvert
6. Algorithms cause confirmation bias.
Have you ever looked up a product and then gotten targeted ads for that product on every single social media platform over the next two weeks? Yeah, this brings us to algorithms and confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is how your feed is slowly tailored to what you search or look at. Let’s say you fight with your significant other because they were dismissive about a concern you had. That’s wrong, sure. But then, you Google “What to do when your partner’s dismissive.” You read an interesting article, talk it over with your partner, hash it out, and call it a day. But your phone doesn’t. The next time you’re on the Gram, you see poetry on your feed about dismissive partners. On Facebook, you get an ad for an article about some of the signs of an unhealthy relationship, and – surprise, surprise – being dismissive is on that list. You start to dig deeper and make this situation larger and longer than it should be. This type of confirmation bias can erode relationships by focusing on a problem that you can, indeed, healthily get passed.
Conclusion:
Social media is slowly killing relationships one like and click at a time. One study published in Computers in Human Behavior even stated that people who don’t use social media are 11% happier in their marriages than people who regularly do. That’s a big chunk of happiness! Of course, you can be on social media and still have a healthy relationship, but it’s about balance, honesty, and being very self-aware. I know you’re capable of that!