To us millennials, social media has become part of our life-package and ceased to be the mere privilege and a means of social connection it ought to be. While social media has the potential to beautify our day-to-day relationships, it also has the ability to cause great damage, particularly in our relationships. Social media can become an addiction. Frankly, I am on Whatsapp, Instagram, Twitter or Facebook throughout the day, partly because I am a blogger and need to stay abreast but the other part of me just loves seeing newsfeeds and stories from various people (some I don’t even know in person). I am curious about their lifestyle and how they spend their time which got me realizing that this can be a hazardous place to be.
One minute you’re looking at the #ManCrushMonday hashtag on Instagram, and the next moment you take your eyes of the screen, it’s three years later, you’ve suffered a major heartbreak and you’re lonely despite the endless friend-lists or the infinite scroll feature on your timeline.
The reason being, time flies when you’re on social media and love can disintegrate as it were. When we think of it, time wasted on social media is the time we could have spent with our spouses, siblings, family, and friends. We always think we have more time until one day we wake up and wonder where the time went or why we didn’t enjoy the relationships we had when we had the chance. It’s about time we challenged ourselves to be more intentional about cutting off social media in order to maintain or save our relationships. How exactly can social media kill your relationship?
DISCONNECTION FROM REALITY- Social media has allowed us to delve into the lives of our favorite celebrities more than ever before and it seems like the more we know their thoughts and feelings at any time of the day, the more it’s making some of us a bit too obsessed with choreographed idol lifestyles while we lose touch with reality. We are no longer living in the moment and romance is just nowhere to be found. We often ruin precious moments by the need to take a snap of it for our status updates. The “attention diversion” effect of social media has left us spending less time with our loved ones even when we are in the same room as them. The more time we spend immersed in the online world, the more we send an indirect message to our partners that we are less interested in the real world. Now, because relationships are emotionally driven; when we interfere with the emotional foundations, we drop a bomb on the way we relate with our partners thereby indirectly halting our relation-ships.
LAID-BACK INFIDELITY - With social media, cheating has been made fairly easier too. It’s sad but true that the coming in of social media made it all too easy for people to cheat on their partners and get away with it. With just a swipe of the finger, you can talk to someone, slide in their “DM” and you might land on a cushion. People with terrible social skills can find some form of backup on social media, making cheating one of the most devastating effects of social media on relationships. A “friend request” will lead to a “wave”, then a compliment and before you know it, your partner is excited about a complete stranger who by the way, isn’t going to be a stranger for long. Resultantly, people who may have no conscious desire to engage in irresponsible or unfaithful behavior are unfortunately finding themselves in mischief, simply because the option was readily available to them.
Social media is the single greatest breeding ground ever for infidelity… If I had a dollar for every divorce caused by infidelity that started on Facebook, I would have… well, just about the same amount of money I have.”- James Sexton, Divorce lawyer.
THE EX EFFECT- Another adversity with social media is that you can’t simply and swiftly escape your past. Trying to get over your ex, for instance, is almost impossible when their face keeps popping up on your newsfeed all the time. The fact is that many people stay friends with their ex via social media, and it’s usually an incitement to calamity. All it takes for a relationship to start limping is an old spark such as submitting a friend request or a birthday notification of an ex on your timeline. They might just be wanting to check on their ex-lover after all these years and then one thing leads to another and the old flame is rekindled. Even if this hasn’t actually happened, the threat will always be there no matter how long the breakup has been. The digital era has made closure hard to come by. Regardless of how long ago you broke up, exes can loiter electronically, and this can initiate anxiety in new partners making them insecure. The mere fact of knowing the possibility of this adversity may allow paranoia to set in, take a toll on your self-esteem and further chip on already sinking foundations.
Social media is a form of escapism and it is often a catalyst to the end of a relationship… "-Zahra Pabani, Family Law Expert.
JUXTAPOSING- Social media can also destroy your relationship by giving you a rose-tinted view of other people’s lifestyles and relationships. Not only are the “perfect couple” or “bae goals” posts extremely annoying and obnoxious, but time and again they’re also putting across a message that a relationship is perfect when really, the opposite is likely to be true. This is likely to pressure you into creating unrealistic expectations based on a counterfeit blueprint of an ideal relationship. Social media certainly affects the expectations that we have around romantic relationships intrinsically. A quick scroll through your Instagram feed is enough to make you question whether your relationship is as #couplegoals as other people's perfect yet staged relationships. Whether we admit it or not, constant comparison does and will happen when perusing social media such that we wonder why our lives aren't as perfect as the ones we see online every day.
OVERSHARING- Social media also comes with the overwhelming pressure to stay relevant to trends leading some to share almost everything about their relationships. The consequence is that nothing is private anymore, so while you may think there’s no problem telling the world that you’ve just had the most despicable fight with your partner or that you have been surprised with the new Range Rover, they may not think it so cool to be exposed that much. If you’re the type to overshare, you might actually be distancing your mate by being the one who shares every tiny detail of what’s going on in your lives and as such don’t act surprised when your relationship suffers an immature death. You may be asking, “what if I’m sharing the good stuff? Believe it or not, a lot of people still cherish their privacy and it’s important to know your partner’s standpoint before you lay everything in the open.
JEALOUSY- With social media, we are given more reasons than ever to get those feelings of jealousy. It’s so much easier to find yourself freaking out if your partner likes a photo of someone of the opposite sex online or posts a comment. Due to paranoia, you will never fall short of unnecessary drama and with social media, everything tends to blow out of proportion no matter how good your intention was. Not only do you have to worry about social connections, but you also have to worry about inward bound friend requests from random people who have underhanded motives. If your partner chats online with members of the opposite sex on a regular basis, you may have reason to worry, right? Well, this worrying can lead to paranoia, jealousy, snooping, arguments, fights, and in due course a shortcut to your relationship’s final destination. If you’re not careful, social media can even push you to the extremes of stalking your partner’s activity online and it’s not a healthy habit.
It is nonetheless prudent to not entirely blame social media for killing relationships, as platforms like Whatsapp, Facebook, and Instagram merely endow those who are unhappy in their relationships, making them realize that there’s a bigger world out there which easily caters for their insatiable desires.
Thus social media is just a catalyst to whoever you are and whatever you want to achieve.
At the grand scheme of it all, even if your behavior on social media doesn't instantly kill your relationship, it will undeniably cause some cracks and can have a negative impact on your partner's trust. What can we do about it then? The key is keeping perspective on social media and its appropriate place in your life and see to it that your real moments are not ruined by your virtual fantasies. Don’t make the mistake many of us make of equating the frequency of your presence on your partner's page or timeline for the love they have for you. Be vigilant and don’t be a victim of “online display of affection” when in reality you’re starving your partner of the very things you post daily on social media.
Truly words of wisdom
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