The use of social media has undoubtedly affected dating lives or romantic relationships. With the improvement in technology, many people now have smartphones that enable them to access social media whenever they want. Social media accounts such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook have emerged, changing the way people begin and maintain relationships with romantic relationships being the most affected. Does social media use help the couples know and understand each other better, or does it only create the couple’s suspicion? (Sonja Utz, et al., 2011) examined how increased social media use to improve or harm the overall satisfaction of romantic relationships. In this paper, I will evaluate and present the reasoning provided by scholarly sources and discuss their findings
Presentation of an argument that social media use improves the relationship
Prior research has focused on the harmful effects of social media use and romantic relationships. But some evidence shows that social media use can improve relationships with acquaintances and friends (Ellison et al., 2013). The study suggests that social media use attempts to maintain bridging capital, especially the weaker ties with friends and acquaintances. However, its use also provided bonding capital, strong ties with acquaintances, and close friends. Social media use can be used to suggest signs of commitment, especially when a new partner posts the status of relationship as “in a relationship.” Such status can affect the dynamics in the offline relationship. This study shows that people tend to display their affection on social media as a sign of affection to their partners. To determine how social media improves romantic relationships, the study examined eleven social media users. The study concludes that social media use improves romantic relationships.
The following are the primary arguments presented in standard form;
Premise 1: various studies suggest that satisfaction in relationships is positively related to social media use, and partners’ overall satisfaction tends to improve their romantic relationships.
Premise 2: social media use, especially for grooming, affects the happiness of the relationship positively. Social media use for grooming strongly improves relationships because grooming involves browsing the partners or friend’s profiles to find more information about the partner.
Premise 3: the need for popularity also improves romantic relationships for people who like to look popular on social media (Ellison et al., 2007). Such people are happy when their partners display positive aspects of their relationships publicly.
The article appears to have strong reasoning because the premises presented appear to provide adequate evidence that social media use improves relationships by bringing satisfaction and happiness in partners. The article also explains how harmful social media is when the partners are jealous of each other over its use. The article suggests that the harm results when social media use results in potentially destructive emotions that present a threat to the relationship. If the study is right, then social media use can really cause harm to romantic relationships as the evidence and the premises supporting the harm resulting from social media use outweigh the positive impacts or happiness.
However, the article presented some limitations of the study, suggesting that the sample used consisted of more females than males, and they were all students. The study also represented young couples with almost 30% in relationships for three years or longer. Another limitation is that the measures mostly included self-report measures and, therefore, the result may have been influenced by social desirability. Some emotions affecting the relationships such as behaviors like reading partner’s emails secretly and jealousy are difficult and impossible to observe.
Presentation of an argument that social media use harm relationships
Along with the benefits of social media use, it is also possible to recognize the negative effects on relationships. The social networking sites have improved the way new people meet and begin or maintain conversations very easy with them. The ease of access continues even after one person enters into a romantic relationship. The person may find it difficult to stop using dating applications and social media, thus causing relationship difficulties, including jealousy, distrust, resentment, and infidelity. Others may feel jealous as their partner contact with a previous partner with their satisfaction in the relationship declining depending on their perception of their partner’s social media relationships. This jealous may create conflict that never existed previously.
The article focuses explicitly on the jealousy related to Facebook use. The article suggests that the availability of information on a partner in social media sites creates jealousy. The jealousy resulting from a person seeing the partner receive a wall message from someone of the opposite sex may bring about emotions or reactions, thus creating conflicts in relationships.
The arguments presented in the article can be summarized as follows:
Premise 1: monitoring behaviors of checking your partner’s profile regularly is related to social media jealousy. Such partners are more likely to experience jealousy when they see harmless events (Helsper and Whitty (2010).
Premise 2: Use of social media, especially for grooming, can result to jealousy. Partners can feel jealous after browsing friends’ profiles, which can also create conflicts in relationships (Tufekci (2008).
Premise 3: The need for popularity is also related to social media jealousy that creates conflicts in relationships. People who tend to seek popularity by creating an idealized image of a happy relationship in social media are more likely to experience jealousy (Zhao et al., 2008).
Premise 4: Trait jealousy in relationships is positively related to oi social media jealousy.
Premise 5: relationship satisfaction is negatively associated with reactive social media jealousy (Barelds and Barelds-Dijkstra (2007)
This article presents solid reasoning supported by several research findings. The conclusion of the article seems to summarize the premises, which represents the findings of the research. The premises are strong since several scientific-based studies support there.
Along with the strengths, there are also several limitations of the research, such as the high monitoring behavior that raised some doubts to the correlations observed. Also, the sample size did not include the couples who have been in relationships for more than ten years who are probably not active in social media sites. Future research should, therefore, examine the effects of social media use on long-term relationships.
Evaluation of argument
All the scholarly sources provided strong evidence for their findings by examining the information from several scientific studies. Some non-scholarly articles also provided claims supported by multiple scientific studies, while others did not. This makes the claims of the non-supported sources weak, and thus their positions may appear weak. Some scholarly sources are appearing to contradict each other as they provide both weak and strong scale scores for the relationship satisfaction from different social media sites.
However, analyzing the contradicting data from both scholarly sources carefully can help to make the right position or a conclusion about the impacts of social media use on relationships. The sources supported by more studies can prove to answer the research question better. The non-scholarly sources can also provide valid claims as they pull their data from whatever source tends to support their position. The information provided in the non-scholarly source is more likely to be pulled from the scholarly articles though the authors may fail to cite the source.
Conclusion
This study attempted to examine whether social media use to improve or harm relationships. The studies provided both positive and negative sides of social media. The study found that social media use by couples or dating partners is more likely to improve their relationships as they feel happy about displayed public affection by their partners. However, the study also shows how social media use creates conflicts in relationships as partners become jealous considering the amount of information, inducing events, the way of monitoring, and public display, which lead to negative experiences.
References