Facebook Sucks with Relationships

Hobart, Carson

21019719

June 10, 2010

Individual Paper:

Facebook and its Negative Effects on Intimate Relationships

Since the introduction of Facebook, the world has seemingly shrunk in terms of the people you know and whom you can connect with through the use of the Internet. Friend circles have grown ten-fold, and everyone knows everything about everyone. The overall dynamic of friendship seems to have been altered, through the widespread availability of finding and “friending” someone through Facebook connections. All in all, Facebook definitely has multiple positive aspects in regard to social networking, however the focus of our group was the overall effect of Facebook on intimate relationships, and how these relationships have been altered since the advent of Facebook and it’s “relationship statuses.” The emphasis of this paper however (and the personal insight I gained from this research) will be on how Facebook has played a negative role in the overall health and success of intimate relationships in a very public realm, and how completely removing oneself from the network itself could be the only method of reversing its adverse effects.

The main methods of research I was responsible for, were to participate in the execution of a multiple choice scaled survey, and the creation of questions employed in an interpretative survey aimed at discovering the specific details of relationships intertwined with Facebook. The multiple choice survey was sent out to multiple individuals and used to gain an overall sense of intimate relationships on Facebook, while the interpretative surveys were designed to gain a deeper insight into a few select couples and how Facebook has effected them. I also engaged in participant observation, as I myself use Facebook and am currently involved in a relationship that involve aspects of Facebook that were the focus of this study. Through observing others relationships from within the realm of Facebook and participating in the culture that I have been a part of for years, I could immerse myself, participating and observe the very topic I was studying. By using personal experiences, as well as analyzing stories from focus groups within Facebook, I could gain a deeper knowledge of relationships on Facebook, and discover that I myself find it to have a very high potential to cause the relationships it interact with to turn for the worst.

When it comes to Facebook, it seems that there is a lot that goes unsaid through the channels of assumption and interpretation that generally skew the reality of an issue, causing it to become something that it is not. The fundamental aspect of Facebook as having the characteristic of being asynchronically social seems to be the most probable reason for this to occur, as there is plenty of time between communicative moments for an individual to construct their own ideas in their head through their self-interpretation of tagged photos, wall posts, or news feeds, and extrapolate wild ideas before allowing an explanation of the truth by the other partner. When this concept comes into play through an intimate relationship, the potential for adverse patterns to appear become inescapable. Through my own insight, and through the described experiences of others, “speculation, paranoia, and jealousy” all have the high potential to be the summation of the vast, yet highly inconclusive insight into a significant other’s life (Day 2010). Thoughts run throught mind like, why did he say that to her? What is she doing in that picture with him? Why hasn’t he responded to me yet? Misunderstanding tends to have a tremendous role in the negativity found within relationships on Facebook, and based on the limited research I was involved in, it seems that misunderstanding is quite widespread on sites like this, whether its something subtle or insignificant, or tremendously impacting to the point that the repercussions of the miscommunication are irreversible (such as breaking up with someone over a misconstrued photograph or comment). More specifically focusing on the textual examples of misunderstanding, Carolyn Axtell, a senior researcher at the Institute of Work Psychology and Management School at Sheffield University, suggests that miscommunication is due to the, “limited set of cues available on sites like [Facebook]. You don’t get the subtleties of voice tone, facial expressions or body language you usually have when interacting with others that can make interpreting the meaning of messages difficult” (Justice 2007).

Also regarding miscommunication, new users of Facebook tend to not know the subtle differences of rules in the Facebook culture when compared to the outside world. As there is no “how to” book on Facebook culture, these cultural memes must be learned through practice and experience within that specific realm. Hal Niedzviecki, in his New York Times article, “Facebook in a Crowd” recounts an experience he had in realizing how specific norms in real life are not the same norms in the Facebook culture, and how he, even as a long time user of Facebook, still didn’t know all the minute details of living in the world of Facebook. When putting two individuals in a relationship together with different levels of experience on Facebook, the tendency for subtle miscommunications tend to build up. The recounted stories from the people I interviewed, as well as the stories I remember from my personal past continue to lessen my faith in Facebook as a reliable and positive facet of any intimate relationship. There is simply too much guessing involved to hold a healthy and stable relationship together that is heavily based in Facebook.

Another aspect of how utilizing Facebook contributing to the failure of intimate relationships, can be seen through the concept of the Proteus Effect. Coined by Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson, the Proteus Effect describes how an individual’s real world identity can slowly conform to a digitally constructed self they created on a digital realm (Yee & Bailenson 2007). This concept can cause real world issues, leading people’s behaviors in the real world to alter dramatically to match their digital self. Relating this theory to relationships, a relationship in the real world could just as easily be skewed to sync with that which is represented on Facebook, thereby allowing a relationship to be founded on a false pretense of how they think they should be, feel and act, rather than how they truly are. (Yee & Bailenson 2007). With the web of comments, tagged pictures, and newsfeeds 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 its breaking point in which the relationship is has no other purpose than simply to exist. This “lie” will eventually crumble, and through the intense connection with everyone else on Facebook, the impending breakup will be inherently public and difficult.

Moving forward, there is a fundamental, and often overlooked aspect of Facebook that many do not seem to realize, but everyone knows: the simple fact that the world of Facebook, though traversing into the realm of the real, is a realm of cyberspace and of virtual reality. Many would argue that Facebook is a real world and I would agree with them that Facebook does seem to occupy both realms simultaneously. It acts as a median between cyberspace and reality, due to the fact that it has characteristics and constructs based in both worlds. That being said, the rules of the real world may not apply to the world of Facebook. To emphasize my point that Facebook has a basic virtual aspect separate from the real world, I will quote The Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace written by John Perry Barlow. In reference to the difference between the real world and the world of cyberspace, Barlow states, “Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live” (Barlow 1996). This is an important quote with regard to the point I am trying to make that physicality does not have a place in the world of Facebook, leading this conversation to a very interesting discussion of how the concept of cheating on a significant other has changed in recent years. Before the onset of Facebook and other virtual forms of communication, cheating was considered an act of physical qualities. Now, as Barlow aptly put it, “Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you [the real world], we cannot obtain order by physical coercion” (Barlow 1996). This brings up a very controversial subject of cheating, and how the concept of cheating has evolved over the past few years. What is cheating now? There is no universal definition, but as relationships have evolved through the use of social networking sites, less than admissible relationships can evolve as well, leading one to believe that cheating exists on Facebook, and also is readily available through the vastly superior numbers of friends on the network rather than in real life. One recent study found that a sample of Facebook users at one university reported a mean of 246 friends, while another reported a similar finding of 272 friends (Tong et al 2008: 532-533). Clearly is can be seen that these numbers vastly overshadow the once smaller friend circles of about 10-20 during pre-Facebook days. The aspect of such readily available illegitimate relationships on Facebook undercuts any relationship the act is attached to is disheartening, and if undiscovered, the relationship will inherently crumble. Cheating as a whole has always been known to cause controversy and havoc in any relationship, however one is more prone to do so within a network of hundreds of people readily available behind closed message boards, than in the real world of a friend network of maybe 50.

Through all the explored facets of negativity within intimate relationships connected to Facebook, it is relatively clear that having any kind of close relationship on, or through Facebook should be carefully tended to, and watched. Even that aspect of keeping a watchful eye on one’s relationship on facbeook could ironically cause issues itself, as a watchful eye is never a fun thing in a relationship built on trust. Many times over it becomes clear that committing “Facebook Suicide” in order to retain any kind of relationship one has left with their significant other is the only way out (Justice, 2007). For some people, only by removing themselves fully from the system itself can they begin to thrive again with the relationship if they focus on the real world aspects of it, and not on the social networking aspects any longer.

Bibliography

Emma Justice, Facebook suicide: the end of a virtual life. The Times, September 15, 2007.

Hal Niedzviecki, Facebook in a Crowd. New York Times, October 26, 2008.

Jason Day, Facebook: New Relationship Killer. Allthingsjason.com, April 14, 2010.

John Perry Barlow, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, 1996.

Nick Yee and Jeremey Bailenson, The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior. Human Communication Research 33(3):271–90, 2007.

Stephanie Tom Tong, Brandon Van Der Heide, Lindsey Langwell, Joseph B. Walther, Too Much of a Good Thing? The Relationship Between Number of Friends and Interpersonal Impressions on Facebook. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13(3):531–49, 2008.