By: Meg Swanson
The digital age has invaded the way people meet, communicate with those closest to them and the way they lead their day to day lives. One of the biggest areas social media has had an impact on in the last ten years is the world of dating and people’s love life! There is much debate on the use of networking platforms and if they have managed to aid or hinder the ability to create and maintain healthy, loving relationships. Social media in its essence is all about creating and maintaining relationships; which can be hard to do with an uncertain, unforeseeable future.
Communicating in today’s society is more often than not taking place screen-to-screen rather than face-to-face. With apps like Tinder, Bumble, and Grindr it makes it easy for single parties to explore their options and meet new, interesting people in their area without the added stress of an awkward, in-person first interaction. This can make it much easier for these people to find romantic connections. Though the first interaction may seem effortless and carefree, this new style of dating can also become exhausting. With no way to tell what tone of voice a message was sent in and never meeting this person in real life (IRL), it can prevent you from understanding the way they mean the things they say. It requires the need to read into every single emoji, spelling of words, and punctuation that is sent. This in turn can lead to reading a text message over and over again, trying to dissect what your new internet love trulymeant by that last response. Not to mention looking at other apps like Instagram or Snapchat to see how many posts they’ve liked or if they’ve seen your stories yet. Deciphering all of these hidden signals to see if they feel the same about you would prove to be stressful!
Some choose not to take these apps seriously. Alyssa Bowers, a student at the University of Northern Iowa who tried Tinder in the past, laughs and says, “Honestly, I just used it as a confidence booster. It wasn’t ever about meeting anyone for me. I was a freshman and pretty insecure, so I just looked for compliments on it.”
With the ease of starting a conversation online, also comes the absolute free will to end it. Chatting online leaves room for no commitment and complete freedom to ditch whoever you may have not been vibing too well with. A fairly new term, “ghosting,” is when a person cuts off all communication with their old fling or the person they’ve been talking to with zero warning or notice before hand. Though this may sound like a great option if you’re the one uninterested, being on the receiving end of this treatment can leave the person feeling confused and questioning themselves or what they did wrong in the conversation. Bowers states that although she feels bad about it, “The guy just would not take a hint. So, I felt like I had no other option. Would I do it again? Probably. It’s just so easy because you can block them on absolutely everything and if they don’t live around you, you’re never going to see them again.”
The stress however, does not end at the beginning of a relationship, but ultimately with the added use of networking platforms, it could become more of a headache once a commitment has been made. According to Pew Research Center,only 10% of couples who use the internet stated that it has had a “major impact” on their relationship, while 17% have said it made a “minor impact.” Though these numbers don’t seem too drastic, this percentage has increased from a total of 16% when the question was first presented back in 2005.
If you don’t post a picture of you and your significant other on Instagram, is it really dating? If you don’t change your relationship status to “In a relationship” on Facebook, is it even official? These are the types of questions people find necessary to ask themselves about dating and defining the relationship, which can lead to arguments and disagreements among couples over what and how much of their personal life they choose to share online.
One of the most popular hashtags of this century has been #relationshipgoals. This thread alone can lead to many couples questioning themselves and if they live up to the standards set by those they follow online. With only the highlight reel being featured on someone’s profile there is a misrepresentation and missing puzzle piece from the whole picture. Posting things followed by these captions are no longer for yourself, but rather to seek others approval and validation. The online world can turn things into a competition of who has the better significant other or relationship.
Not to say that sharing images of your partner is never okay or means there is trouble in your love life, however a study called “Can You Tell That I’m in a Relationship? Attachment and Relationship Visibility on Facebook,” found that those who were more insecure in their relationship tended to make it more visible. This supports the idea that images do not always mean happiness.
Recent college graduate Brendan Benson prefers to see important events in a couple’s relationship but is very firm on what he believes does not need to be showcased on an Instagram or Snapchat account. “No PDA. Like anniversary posts or funny moments, those are okay. I want to see those. But any intimate stuff like kissing or laying in bed together I do not need to scroll past. Those interactions I don’t want to know about and why would you think I’d want to.”
So, if sharing too much could lead to trouble in your partnership, then surely not posting anything at all would counteract that, right? Unfortunately, this is not the case. Of all six people interviewed, five stated that when couples have not posted a picture together for over a month, they question whether they are still together. This is obvious even at a higher level, like with celebrities. If the couple has not been spotted out together in a span of time, almost immediately an article will be released creating rumors of a split.
Three individuals, when asked, said they would hesitate to reach out to either member of the speculated broken up relationship, but rather wait to see if either one says anything about it first. Users also look back on older posts, one person said, to see if they had deleted any pictures they previously had taken together. The digital footprint couples leave behind serve as clues to curious minds, grasping onto any hope that the couple may still be together. An added layer of pressure is now placed on those to remember to update followers on a relationship status through a picture or story upload which can lead to posts losing their authenticity and enjoyment for the owner.
Despite these ideas and concepts meaning so much to the millennial generation, 59-year-old, Janet Brown, sees these problems as almost meaningless or hard to understand and the world of online dating as a great opportunity. Brown shrugged off the idea of social media harming the way couples interact, saying “If anything I would think it’s easier to meet people online. With all the new websites and applications, you can buy or download. The only downfall is that you don’t actually know what the person is like until you meet them.”
When asked if she feels the need to post about her own relationship she said, “I’ve always posted things we do together or if we go anywhere together but usually, I only do that for myself so I can have somewhere to go back and look at those things again. I don’t post too many personal aspects. Those are meant to be cherished and I choose to live in the moment with those memories just me and him; not for my friends on Facebook.”
There’s a clear difference in viewpoints between a younger generation and an older one. With the introduction of networking websites coming to those in the middle of their life versus those who were born into, there would no doubt be a dramatic difference. For millennials, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter is all they know. There has never been a time that they have gone without it. It’s a new frontier for the world of dating, constantly shifting and reinventing itself into something new.
There is pressure put on those in the dating universe to profess their love on every single one of these platforms. No longer are teens, young adults, or even middle-aged couples shouting their love for one another from the rooftops. Instead, they are typing, then retyping, then typing it out again only to show it in a caption for their next Instagram post where it will be analyzed and critiqued on just whether or not it truly is the ultimate #relationshipgoal.
Pictures by:
Unsplash
Pew Research Center
Pew Research Center
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