Social media is everywhere, it has become our life and something that we use in our day-to-day life for passing time, for information, for sharing videos that may represent our feelings, etc. We eat breathe sleep repeat on devices and social media apps these days.
But is this really helping our relationships? Is it helping us build healthy relationship with our partner?
Let’s find out

Positive Impact of Social Media on Relationship

• Better Communication: Sending something that helps you convey your feelings, needs and wants to your partner as well as showing them the same can help foster better communication and understanding.
• Finding a Partner: Using different apps can get you a partner that can be your perfect find and you can enjoy a healthy relationship.
• Share Emotions easily: Once you find anything on social media that matches with your feelings and emotions, it becomes easy to share those with your partner without having to wait for those conversations.
• Shared Interest: You both can explore various options that can be common for both to do together which gives you both good time to spend together.
• Build Relationships: When you find shared interests and it becomes easy to share your emotions, your relationship can be build easily as communication becomes easy and faster.
• Lower Anxiety: Since sending things on social media has become easier, reaching out has become easier, which means that it can help lowering anxiety that arises from communicating for lesser duration or not being able to communicate through words.
• Improved Self-Esteem: When it gets easier to communicate and reach out to each other, it helps you to focus on yourself which improves your confidence in yourself and develops self-love hence improving self-esteem.
• Greater Empathy: Once you find out what all your partner has been doing for you, you will feel empathetic towards the efforts he/she is putting in the relationship. This helps to build a better stronger relationship.
• Promotes Trust: All these positive emotions, shared messages, easy and faster communication, empathy helps building trust in the relationship which is necessary for the relationship to survive.

Signs that Social Media might be Negatively Impacting your Relationship

• Comparison: When there is too much being posted about relationship and ideal partner and married life goals and things that a partner should do for you; comparison is bound to happen. This can negatively impact the relationship developing mistrust, rising of unrealistic expectations and being too demanding to meet the expectations on the internet.
• Posting for Likes: We all get the urge to show our relationship or talk about our relationship on social media just because we see others doing it too. Maybe that could be too much for both of you, but it affects the relationship.
• FOMO Actions: Social media can give you the feeling of missing out on the current ways the couples behave or act in order to love each other.
• Unrealistic Expectations: When you see only one side of the relationship on social media it is possible that you can get attracted by that without knowing the reality. All that is shown on social media can raise expectations that may not be a necessity in your relationship, yet, you want those things to happen in your relationship too.
• Not paying attention to your partner: Spending too much time on social media can give less time to you to spend time with your partner. This can negatively affect your relationship.
• Insecurities: The way things are portrayed on social media can give rise to many insecurities if there isn’t proper established communication between the couple.
• Diminished Interest: Consuming too many things on social media can impact interest in your partner and/or qualities of your partner that you were finding good till the time you started using the social media and having unrealistic expectations from your partner.
• Lack of Real Life Attention: Wanting everything that social media advices you to want from your partner and spending all your free time that you can spend with your partner can take you away from getting real life attention, love and warmth from your partner.

Impact of social media usage on the quality time you spend with your spouse

If you spend more time on social media, your quality time spent with your partner will decrease. Decreased time spending with your partner can give rise to many misunderstandings, insecurities, unmet needs, overwhelming emotions and lots of emotional ups and downs. Spending your free time with your partner without using phones or technology can help the relationship grow deeper.

If you restrict the use of social media or use it wisely then it can help you build better relationship, foster healthy communications and discussions and help discover new activities or things for you as a couple.

Pressure to Present a Perfect Relationship Online

It all depends on how you see it, wanting to present being perfect is fine but are you perfect?
Do you want to be perfect on social media?
It also largely depends on whether your partner wants to be seen with you on social media and if wants to be seen then how he/she wants to be seen?

When one partner doesn’t want to be seen, it creates pressure on him/her to keep up with the social media posting because his/her partner wants to be seen. It can create lots of misunderstandings, miscommunication, insecurities, mistrust in a relationship. If the couple fails to understand this, effectively communicate about this to come to a common ground, or discuss on what should ever go on social media and the frequency of things going on social media; then it can hamper the trust and smooth functioning of the relationship.

Influence of social media on the perception of the relationship

While social media can influence in both, positive and negative ways; you could be totally unaware of behind the scenes and the unseen facts that are behind the camera. I am not saying that everyone who portrays good healthy relationships on social media will have a bad relationship with each other, but they will also have times when they are fighting, they won’t meet each others expectations, or any other problems. That is what you don’t see being on the other side of the screen and end up having problems in your relationship which may not be necessary to have at the first place.

How can a couple ensure that social media does not create jealousy or insecurity in your relationship?

What are your goals, as an individual and as couple?
You have to think and put down what are your goals as an individual, what do you want to put on social media, how much should you put about your personal life on social media and what aspect you want to share about your personal life on social media.
You both together have to think about the same as a couple.

What kind of bond you want to share with your partner and how much social media is okay to use for both of you?
Think about how your relationship looks like, what are your foundations as a couple together, what are the things that make you and your partner happy, what are the little to large things your partner does for you that makes you feel loved and appreciated. Think whether what you see on social media is applicable in your relationship or not, do you need to adapt to what you are seeing and if it is applicable then how much do you need to apply in your relationship. Decide on what are the times when you both won’t be using your devices and just be spending quality time with each other discussing about your life, feelings, life goals, etc.

How do you balance the need for privacy with the desire to share aspects of your life on social media as couple?

Balance is a the key word here. Sharing the content that you like or want to communicate is fine but it’s important to evaluate the purpose of sharing the content.

You both need to sit together and have a healthy discussion on
Why is the particular content shared?
What is the purpose of the content shared?
Whatever is shared is it necessary in your relationship?
Is it doable by your partner?

Knowing when to not overshare and if something is overshared then why is it so necessary needs to be communicated between the couple. Sometimes, it could just mean that there is something that hasn’t been communicated and worked on in the relationship that needs healthy communication.

How do you use social media together as a couple to strengthen your bond?

Social media has lot of content on it. Not every content is bad, some of the content is genuine and can help you grow. If you want to use social media to strengthen your bond as a couple make sure that you do the following things:

• Make sure what aligns with you, as an individual and as couples
• Follow the accounts that align with your expectations as individuals and as couples
• Keep a check on who you follow and whether it is helping you have healthy entertainment an grow or find something that is valuable
• Keep reviewing your relationship outside of social media so that you can get an idea of how you can use it better to strengthen your bond.

What role does social media play in maintaining connections with family and friends?

It does play a significant role. It is easy to communicate via social media, you can share things and be connected. As a couple you need to think what and how much you need to share and put when there are family and friends involved.

How to handle interactions with ex-partners or potential romantic interests on social media?

Normally before getting married or getting into a relationship, all the past relationship will be discussed along with ex-partner and the relation with them as well. It is also clearly communicated and agreed upon between the couple as to how to handle communication with ex-partner and what is or isn’t allowed when it comes to handling potential romantic interests on social media. If this isn’t discussed already, it is a good time to have this conversation with your partner.

Also discuss about cheating – how does your partner view and what does your partner view as cheating, once you know and understand this while you agree with this, other things won’t matter.

What are the ways to disconnect from social media to focus on each other?

• It is important to communicate as communication is the key to understand each other and expectations that either of you have regarding the relationship.
• Find common interests and hobbies that don’t require the use of social media.
• Set alarms to spend time off any devices and spend time together.
• Explore new things and ways to stay connected with each other without getting bored.

What are some must have social media etiquette within your relationship?

Maintaining social media etiquette is highly individualistic. But I would like to say a few things:

• Don’t give all in when it comes to posting on social media
• Maintain and respect each other’s privacy
• Use social media aligned with your believes and values
• Use social media wisely so that it doesn’t haunt or hamper your peace of mind

I recently came across Namrata Shah who goes by the name Radiant Realization and she hosts podcast wherein she invites people from different fields to discuss and talk about their expertise. I had a wonderful opportunity to be her guest and this was my topic.
All the titles written, are the wonderful questions asked by her. I have written our beautiful conversation on this blog. To view our conversation, click on the here.