Will social media strengthen or threaten romantic love?

Abstract

The ways we represent our relationships, notice our partners, and let the social media interfere in our romantic relationships have aroused researchers' interest. In this research, the purpose was to analyze, how people who use social media actively perceive the connection between social media and romantic relationships. The research questions set for this study were: (1) What are the rules of self-disclosure that support romantic relationships in social media?; (2) What kinds of benefits do social media provide for romantic relationships?; and (3) What kinds of threats or disadvantages do social media provide for romantic relationships? This was a qualitative research in which the research participants (N=25) were approached with an online questionnaire that included open-ended questions. The answers were analyzed with the qualitative content analyzing method. The findings showed that the research participants could name some principles of self-disclosure regarding their romantic relationships in social media and certain benefits as well as harms and threats of social media for a romantic relationship. The findings were further discussed in the light of the elements of love as emotions, love as actions, and love as skills and knowledge that here could be interpreted as the media literacy of romantic relationships . Will social media strengthen or threaten romantic love? 710 Introduction Social media and social network sites (SNS) are an ordinary part of life: we use the social media to interact and publish widely about our daily lives 1. The research at hand was conducted in Finland where in 2015, 93% of people aged 15-55 years had used social media services during the last three months 2. We asked Finnish university students how they perceived the role of social media from the point of view of romantic relationships.