The Effects of Facebook on Intimate Relationships.

Methods
In order to analyze how Facebook affects intimate relationships both positively and negatively, we conducted 60 surveys and 30 interpretative interviews (each group member surveyed 10 people and interviewed 5). Along with surveys and interviews, our fieldwork included participant observation; we had our own Facebook accounts and had our own sets of friends to question from. Our research extended to spending time on Facebook and observing how people in intimate relationships interacted with each other. We examined the process of forming a relationship on Facebook, how the relationship functions while using Facebook as a tool of communication and “scrap-booking,” and also investigated the post-relationship/breakup experience. We took several user aspects of Facebook into account, which includes the decision to change relationship statuses (making it public or choosing not to share their relationship with the public), sharing passwords, and more. We made the decision to stay within the age group of 18-25, in the population of students in college and chose not to include those who were married. These methods helped us draw conclusions from our findings and gave us more insight on how Facebook is involved as a social networking website within relationships. We hope to gain a better understanding of how Facebook affects relationships by examining intimate relationships in both the private and public realms. We aim to learn about relationships that were formed before Facebook became the expected social networking platform. We also aim to observe relationships that were created while the parties involved were actively using Facebook, and to examine the post-relationship/break-up experience within the Facebook community (we will do this by looking at the break-up from the couple’s point of view as well as from an outsider’s point of view).

Relationships Before the Emergence of Facebook
Facebook is a growing social network, continuously spreading worldwide with over 400 million users and approximately 19 million active users logging in each day to check others’ profiles. Users have created with each other what Clive Thompson of New York Times calls “ambient intimacy,” which can be described as “the ultimate expression of a generation of celebrity-addled youths who believe their every utterance is fascinating and ought to be shared with the world” (Thompson 2008:1). Everything can be shared on Facebook, and no one seems to mind because everyone cares about even the most trivial details of life, down to the very minute details such as what you ate for lunch. Many of us do not seem to remember how life was pre-Facebook; many of the relationships we form could not have happened if it were not for the convenience of Facebook and its social networking features. Facebook, then, has the capability to change and impact the intimate relationship; it can make it, maintain it, and even break it. The main question we aim to answer now is: how have intimate relationships changed through the emergence of Facebook and how does the use of Facebook affect the people involved?
Before Facebook, people did not have many chances to keep in contact with another person without verbally communicating with them had a Myspace and migrated to a Facebook account when they moved to college. Some people had accounts on other social networking websites such as Friendster and Myspace, but it was harder to search for long distance friends or see who one went to school with. There were no constant status updates from friends or recently uploaded pictures to keep us in the loop. Our impressions then, whether first, second, or last were mostly made personally. With Facebook, we have the ability to see a whole profile dedicated to what type of friends people have, the pictures that they are tagged in, or comments made from their friends. When considering relationships, we consider the physical attraction from photos; physical attractiveness helps when people choose other people to form intimate relationships with. Joseph B. Walther. examines the relationship between physical attractiveness and Facebook, claiming that if an average person is in a picture with a person that is unattractive they are seen as more attractive (Walther et al. 2002:30). The vice versa applies as well; if an average person is in a picture with a person that is attractive they are seen as less attractive. This demonstrates the effect Facebook has on the perception of beauty when presented in a photo.
This leads us to the idea of how a virtual world emerges within a physical world and shows how this may determine the types of relationships we have with others. (Walther & Parks 2002:58) claim that social networking sites such as Facebook facilitate “mixed mode relationships.” They define mixed mode relationships as “those which move from an electronic context to a face-to-face setting or vice-versa […] in the case of social networking systems we may see many relationships that hover between the virtual and physical quite frequently” (Tom Tong et al. 2008:532). A “friend” on Facebook can mean something completely different than a friend in reality. We can relate to having friends on Facebook that we have never met before or are just acquaintances. However, being Facebook friends with someone now means that you virtually share some sort of cyber relationship with another person that can be seen as a friendship. Because of this phenomena, the process on forming relationships with others is altered by the constant usage of social networking sites like Facebook. This can be explained by Nick Yee and Jeremey Bailenson, who call this the Proteus Effect, which is explained by: “when thousands of users interact, most of whom have chosen attractive avatars, the virtual community may become more friendly and intimate. This may impact the likelihood of relationship formation online” (Yee and Bailenson 2007:273). 



The Definition(s) of “Relationship”
The growing population on this online community has advocated the rise in online societies and consequently, many relationships have bloomed as a result of Facebook. This isn’t to say that there were much less relationships before Facebook was around; however, Facebook has revolutionized the term “relationship” in a whole different aspect than before. Susan Jacob has a PhD in Relationship Study. She defines the term ‘relationship’ in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary as “the relation connecting or binding participants in a relationship (Kinship) and the state of affairs existing between those relations.” This means that before Facebook revolutionized the term, “relationship” was a certain bond between people who deeply cared for each other (i.e Love, Liking, Kinship). However, Facebook has changed and continues to change the term relationship into something much different from the conventional definition; it expands and molds the definition to a point where many people are not even sure what constitutes a relationship anymore. Although Facebook does incorporate this definition and there are many people who do still see it as this way, the term “relationship” has become something that is so common and “tossed” around carelessly that it does not hold the same meaning that it stood for before.

Different features of Facebook influence the formation and maintenance of relationships as well as determine how relationships are looked at in various ways. The relationship status on Facebook is a feature that changes the way relationships are publicly looked at. This feature publicly tells the Facebook community if a person is single, in a relationship, in an open relationship, and more. The persons involved open up their relationship to two sets of friends (which at many times can be up to six hundred or more ‘friends’) as well as to the general public that neither party is friends with, if their privacy settings allow it. Furthermore, users can choose to publicly display who they are in a relationship with, with the name being an active link to that user’s profile. Therefore, the relationship “status” on Facebook (single, in a relationship, ‘it’s complicated,’) is not only for the persons involved in the relationship, but it is also for those around them to acknowledge and keep track of.
We have noticed that there are those who post the relationship status on Facebook just for the attention and the extra comments. Rather than having only real-life, face to face communication and word of mouth being enough to know that one is in a relationship, the saying now frequently goes that “if it’s not online on Facebook, it isn’t official.” Some people believe that a Facebook relationship is the final step in making an intimate relationship “official.” Others, however, stay away from making it Facebook public because a relationship status has no meaning to them. Although the relationship status can add pressure, many of the people we interviewed believe that making a Facebook relationship status is not necessary for a legitimate relationship. In fact, many of the interviewees said that a couple could have a successful and meaningful relationship without having their relationship status on Facebook changed. Many people we interviewed said that their status did not mean anything and most of the time they were in “joke” relationships with their best friend. Moreover, some said that Facebook relationship statuses put pressure on the relationship. One of our interviewees said, “a relationship status makes it public, that means people know when you get together with someone and when you break up. It makes it hard.”

In a Time Magazine article about Facebook, an interviewee said, “Some moron tried to convince me that my relationship is not legitimate because I don’t have it on Facebook” (Suddath 2009:1) This is an interesting concept to acknowledge and consider because who gets to say that a whole bond between two different people is illegitimate because it’s not broadcasted on a social networking system? One person that we interviewed suggests that “since Facebook has come around, “relationships have changed meanings in a whole different light. The word stands for a completely different meaning now. Before, relationships were formed because two people really liked each other and it was mainly for themselves, but since Facebook has come around, I believe many people are in relationships nowadays for the attention and just to change their statuses on Facebook. It’s just one extra thing on Facebook to get more comments and replies from friends.” His opinions reflect our observations from participating on Facebook and observing the relationships of our peers; relationships before Facebook became the norm essentially held greater meaning than after the emergence of Facebook, which has revolutionized the meaning of the word, and continues to do so.

Privacy has become a main concern regarding Facebook and intimate relationships. By posting the statuses of every part of one's life, including relationship statuses, any ‘friend’ has complete knowledge and access to one’s personal life. This has gotten very out of hand to the point that there have been media reports of murders, suicides, and problems as a result of Facebook. Because of this, many people grow in fear of their decreasing privacy and have constantly tried to find ways to protect themselves from people whom they do not trust. A website called ReclaimPrivacy.org functions to scan, protect, and change privacy settings that are potentially harmful to one's identity and status. It scans and helps bring notice to many different privacy settings, including relationship statuses. One person we talked to remarked, "Dude, this sh*t is legit! Thanks!" We noticed someone else commented, "nice find dude, our film professor spoke of this before and I'm glad most of mine was secure after the scan." The extent to which this privacy issue goes is unknown; however, it is possible to stop privacy issues with the right knowledge and this includes the privacy problems between those in relationships. If someone wants to know the status of how a couple is doing, all they have to do is go on Facebook, click on the Facebook feature “Wall-to-Wall” between the two people, and read up on their life from past to present. Then, one can judge for themselves. This is an example of an invasion of privacy that people may or may not be aware of; many times, we don’t realize that almost anybody has access to this personal information.



Advantages & Disadvantages of Facebook in Relationships
Facebook has added a new layer to the already complex idea of relationships. More specifically, it adds a virtual level that has the potential to take a relationship beyond the boundaries of the physical world. Facebook has many different advantages for active users who are in relationships, but it can also be detrimental to a relationship. An example of an advantage of Facebook is that it allows the couple to communicate in various ways. The wall-to-wall feature, comments and private messaging allows a couple to publicly and privately keep in contact and show their affection for one another. Furthermore, Facebook can allow for a long distance couple to feel as if they are closer to each other. Although a couple may be separated by many miles in the physical world, it can bring them closer together because of the ability to click to their profile in a matter of seconds or minutes. In one interview, one person explained that without Facebook, he would have never reconnected with a Japanese school friend, whom he later dated. This is an example of some the positive aspects of Facebook and how it fares in reconnecting users in that it allows people to find each other after years of not speaking, helping to form relationships, and even find love.

Facebook can help a couple keep a record of the memories that they have had together by allowing them to browse through photo albums they have uploaded and read past conversations they have had with each other. One interviewee said, “Facebook is like a scrapbook for a relationship.” A couple can always go on Facebook and reminisce about places they have been to or remember inside jokes they once shared. We can take the relationship status feature of Facebook into account again- depending on the personal choice of the parties involved, making a relationship status public can be beneficial to the couple. It can be the next step in considering their relationship legitimate and serious.

Facebook has disadvantages for those involved in intimate relationships as well. According to some of our interviewees, has the dangerous potential to take privacy and personal space away. In some cases, Facebook does not allow a couple to keep things from their partner because of the newsfeed feature and the public nature of Facebook. We can relate this back to Clive Thompson’s idea of ‘ambient awareness.’ “It is, as they say, very much like being physically close to someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does—body language, sighs, stray corner—out of the corner of your eye.” (Thompson 2008:2) In Facebook, this concept of ambient awareness is created through its multiple features, such as micro-blogging through status updates, commenting, wall-to wall, posting and tagging pictures of recent events, and comments. This ambient awareness, though it can be a positive aspect of Facebook, also has the capability of taking privacy and personal space away from those involved in romantic relationships. They are closer and more aware of their significant other’s actions because of the affect of ambient awareness.

Features such as wall-to-wall and the newsfeed can cause problems within relationships, such as trust issues. According to an interviewee, “The newsfeed can cause jealousy,” which seems to be the biggest problem regarding Facebook use in relationships. Many of the people we interviewed said that their partner could interpret things on Facebook the wrong way. Some couples believe that they have to watch what goes on the newsfeed, observing their significant other’s actions such as keeping an eye on who they talk to, or who they befriend for fear of them cheating or being untrustworthy. The same goes for their personal actions. A lot of thought goes into what they themselves publicly put on Facebook; they must be cautious to prevent a partner’s over-reaction or believing that they have done something wrong. Photographs also have a big influence in making judgements about the significant other’s personal life. For example, if one’s partner chooses to make his or her profile picture feature himself/herself and someone other than them, this can spur jealousy. Some couples go as far as un-tagging themselves in photographs or keeping events secret from their partner. Some said that they hid things on Facebook to prevent their partner from finding out about things they were not supposed to be doing.

A couple’s privacy level and ideas surrounding trust change when using social networking websites such as Facebook. The public view of a couple is enhanced because of the public nature of Facebook. Some people we interviewed claimed that they share their passwords with their significant other. Many say that it was not for the purposes of spying but purely out of courtesy to their mate. Our observations show that gender also seems to play a role in how Facebook affects relationships. Women are more likely than men to care about displaying the relationship on Facebook; they tend to put more emphasis on the Facebook status, uploading pictures, commenting, and talking to others about their relationship. Other observations show that for the most part, both men and women show equal amount of flirting on Facebook. The amount of friends that each party has is also taken to account- by that, we mean that the more Facebook friends a person tends to have, the more they seem to be public with their relationship (perhaps this is because having more friends means they are more social).

The Post-Relationship/Break Up Experience
With the introduction of social networking sites such as Facebook, intimate relationships have thus been forever changed, possibly for the worse in some cases. The changes in intimate relationships due to social networking sites such as Facebook hasn’t been studied as in depth as other aspects of relationships, as it has only been around for less than a decade, and has been constantly evolving due to the ever-changing demands of it users. This section will discuss how Facebook not only causes breakups of relationships through the use of the site, but also how Facebook makes breakups that much harder for the individuals involved in the relationship. Facebook has allowed couples to be closer than ever through the use of the internet, allowing them to constantly be in the know of each others lives and doings, through tools like the wall, status updates, tagged photos, Newsfeed, etc. Many may argue that these are all things that can make a relationship easier and more possible for those who have physically distant relationships, but the inverse could be true; that with such intensive intimacy with each other’s lives, the relationship could take a turn for the worst. People’s behaviors in the real world could change through the desire to continue their newly constructed image on Facebook to go in sync with what they think they should be according to their partner’s desires. Yee and Bailenson’s article on the Proteus Effect discusses how one’s image on Facebook could very well change the image and behavior of that individual as a whole. According to Yee and Bailenson, places like Facebook allow individuals to alter their digital self representations relatively easily, in turn altering the behavior of that individual, based on that representation (Yee and Bailenson 2007:273). More simply, their description of the Proteus effect is that “an individuals behavior conforms to their digital self-representation, independent of how others perceive them.” With the web of comments, tagged pictures, and Newsfeed, the Proteus effect could build up to the point that both of the people in the relationship have turned into something that they weren’t before, allowing the relationship to thrive as a lie up to a certain point. This “lie” will eventually crumble, and through the intense connection with everyone else on Facebook, the breakup will be inherently public.

With the introduction of “relationship status” on profile pages, everyone knows the specific details of your relationship and can follow the progress of the relationship by viewing the users wall, tagged photos, and friend comments. The entire idea of Facebook is social networking made easier, and the easier it is for more people to know the minute details of a relationship, the more it becomes complicated between the two actually in the relationship run into problems and break up. Before the inclusion of Facebook in our society, relationship status was mostly known through word of mouth, and when a breakup occurred, it may have been a relatively small thing, with certain individuals controlling who knew and how they found out. Now, since everyone on Facebook (not even one’s close friends) is involved in the status of that relationship, the breakup is widespread, and public, which tends to have negative impacts on the two individuals actually part of the event. Most people would say that breaking up with their significant other is a hard time, and the last thing they would want is to have people they don’t even know consoling them, asking them what happened, or even worse, hitting on them now that they are single, which does occur (O’Neill 2007:1).

Finally, the post-breakup effect that Facebook has created makes it almost impossible to break away from that once close individual, for lack of the ability to stop checking their page and seeing what’s going on in their lives. This may not be the case for all breakups, but for many according to our research, the ability to “get over” the other individual became increasingly difficult through the ability to “stalk” them long after the relationship ended. Most individuals we talked to agreed that the best way to truly get over someone is to completely remove them from your life, and focus on other things/ other people. Facebook does not help them to do this.

With these three facets of the negative things that facebook has done for those in relationships through facebook, it is clear to see that people on facebook should be wary of how they approach any relationship while including facebook into their daily lives.

Outside Research/ Media on Facebook & Relationships
Although there is not a lot of outside research or information on the consequences that Facebook has on intimate relationships, the research that has been done on this subject seems to be pointing towards negative correlations between the use of Facebook and the quality of intimate relationships. One television show on the channel MTV called “True Life” did a segment called “I have Digital Drama,” which followed two young couples who have allowed cell phones and Facebook deteriorate their relationship. For one couple, their distrust for one another went so far as putting locks on their cell phones so they could not read each other’s texts and going into each others’ Facebook profiles in order to see who they have been talking to. This put a tremendous strain on their relationship and eventually led to their break up. The boyfriend in the relationship was constantly on Facebook while the girlfriend was always texting, often ‘Facebook-stalking” his page to see what “Facebook skanks” he was talking to, even referring to them as his “Facebook girlfriends.” Although this is a more extreme example of the downsides of having a Facebook and being in a relationship, in everyday life, people even in our own community do experience this problem in a similar yet milder form. For example, one couple that we interviewed shares a Facebook so that her boyfriend, Andrew*, would not be worried about who she was talking to and adding as a friend. He even threatened to break up with her a few times if she ever made herself a Facebook. As for his girlfriend, Hannah*, she has full access to Andrew’s Facebook and has even gotten in a few fights with Andrew such as the time when he changed his password or when she noticed that the pictures uploaded were of him and another girl.

Another couple that we interviewed did not have so much a problem with who they were talking to on Facebook but rather had a problem with the fact that that they were always on Facebook- even when they saw each other in the physical world, which was at least five times a week. When asked how strong they felt about their relationship before and after Facebook on a scale of 1-10 (1 being the weakest and 10 being the strongest), they rated their pre-Facebook relationship as a 10 whereas after Facebook, they only rated the strength of their relationship as an 8. When asked about the level of intimacy that they felt before and after Facebook, they were satisfied with their level of physical intimacy pre-Facebook; however, after they started Facebook, they became unsatisfied with their level of physical intimacy. When asked why they felt this way, the boyfriend, Dan*, replied “Facebook has too much drama. Every time we logged on, it would just ruin our mood to do anything. So avoiding Facebook was a good idea at the time.”

Other partners that we interviewed experienced less jealousy when it came down to their partners and Facebook. However, what we noticed was that the people that experienced more jealousy on Facebook spent more time on Facebook. The relative time that they spent face to face was relatively the same, which averaged around 3-5 times a week. This data corresponds to recent research, which was published in an academic journal called Cyberpsychology and Behavior. The article, entitled “More Information than You Ever Wanted: Does Facebook Bring Out the Green Eyed Monster of Jealousy?” talks about the results of a recent survey/research done by Muise, Christofides, and Desmarais (2009) about Facebook and relationships, noting that people that were more likely to be jealous, also known as “trait jealousy” were also more likely to be “Facebook jealous.” On top of that, the amount of time that was spent on Facebook contributed to jealousy. The researchers stated after their research that “[Their] results suggest that Facebook may expose an individual to potentially jealousy-provoking information about their partner, which creates a feedback loop whereby heightened jealousy leads to increased surveillance of a partner’s Facebook page. Persistent surveillance results in further exposure to jealousy-provoking information” (Muise, Christofides, and Desmarais 2009:3).

Future Developments & Effects on Relationships
Another aspect of our research was geared towards reading and researching Facebook in the near and distant future. We believe that this information is essential to pursue further research on Facebook’s current effects on relationships and how future changes in Facebook will be reflected within future changes in relationships. We gained insight in areas of some planned changes to Facebook’s user interface and plans for future developments with applications and features; these upcoming inventions and integrations will later have a profound effect on intimate relationships, thereby planning to change and mold the definition of the word ‘relationship’ once more. In an article on AllFacebook.com (a website dedicated to all things related to Facebook) called “Facebook Knows That Your Relationship Will End in a Week,”Mark Zuckerberg, C.E.O and founder of Facebook, examines users’ friendships, relationships and studies patterns of communication. He claims that he can determine to an accuracy of 33% when a relationship was going to end. Zuckerberg made his deductions by looking at “who your friends were friends with, who was newly single,” and other indicators like determining who was looking at another person’s profile. This information is then used to determine what is displayed on the news feed feature.

The fact that this information is consistently looked at and that these patterns of communication are studied paves the way for other future plans of Facebook- developers are in the process of integrating a dating network feature of sorts for its users. Much like Facebook suggests who one should be friends with by looking at how many friends are common between two people and mutual friends that might be long distant, Facebook has plans to suggest who users might be interested in dating by looking into the history of past friendships and relationships. A social compatibility engine by the name of Moonit has integrated astrological matchmaking for romantic relationships as well as friendship compatibility and business relationships as well. This engine makes use of personal information such as “names, genders and birth dates” of the parties involved (O’Neill 2010:1).

These kinds of developments are interesting to learn about because it brings back the concept and concerns with personal privacy. Online dating service websites already exist to bring strangers closer together- but it is another thing for a social networking website such as Facebook to suggest to a user which friends of theirs are compatible with them, and who a relationship might be pursuing with. Facebook emphasizes bringing people closer together by making everything public. Although the option exists for users to control their privacy settings, blocking users or making their profiles private to their own customizations, the default settings more or less make it possible for any person to see their information. If Facebook implements the feature of suggesting “who you should date next,” it has the potential to bring close people even closer, meaning their could be significant changes to existing relationships. It can make people awkward with each other, for example, in a situation where a user is suggested by Facebook to date a friend’s ex-boyfriend or girlfriend. If people choose to make their information more public and if users make use of this future feature, the accuracy of predicting when a relationship will end will inevitably increase (Axon 2010:2).

Written By:
Stella Chu
Ernest Chung 
Carson Hobart
Paul Idos
Jessica Lau
Rachel Ulgado