Facebook impact on offline romantic relationships

Abstract

In this age of social media, Social Networking Sites such as Facebook can influence our daily lives and relationships. Owing to this, it is important to better understand its influence as well as to work on decreasing its negative effects while capitalizing on its positive ones. This literature review seeks to explore Facebook impacts on offline romantic relationships, seeing how the two are intricately linked and relationships can be easily affected by the affordances of Facebook. In the literature review, Facebook is associated with both positive and negative effects. It was found that Facebook aids in relationship progression, maintenance and correlates with relationship satisfaction. In addition, Facebook affords for social statements that can impact the romantic relationship greatly. Negative impacts include jealousy, increased Interpersonal Electronic Surveillance, tensions, decreased intimacy, Facebook addiction and Facebook solicitation behaviours. The negative effects could potentially lead to relationship dissatisfaction if managed inappropriately. Moderating and mediating variables also serve to substantially influence the relationship and they comprise of attachment styles and gender. We further discussed the implications of these findings and suggest precautions and measures that couples could use in the future while surfing Facebook.