A recent study led by Daniel Halpern, specialist in social and digital media and professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, has analyzed the relationship between the quality of couple relationships and the tendency or not of its members to post self-portraits on the networks social The bottom line: selfies do not help strengthen the emotional bond.
According to this research, there are two reasons that explain this phenomenon. The first is jealousy. Both the fact of showing our intimacy, we not only photograph ourselves, we portray our daily lives, as well as the public comments and interactions – sometimes inopportune and poorly educated – that this generates an increase in the state of alarm of the person who has not uploaded the image. The results of Halpern’s work have shown that jealousy in the couple , and the consequent conflicts, increases in parallel with the increase in selfies published by one of its members.
The second reason is supported by work data, but also by recent theories of social psychology that indicate that the individualistic and egocentric use of social networks leads to a considerable increase in narcissism . And what happens when someone fabricates an ideal image online is that they tend to undervalue their real-world partner . The comparison between the gray reality of the day to day and the fictional world of the networks makes the former lose points.
In fact, a study carried out by researchers at Ohio State University (USA) and published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences , revealed that the more a person has a tendency to post selfies on social networks, the greater predisposition they have to suffer from disorders personality such as narcissism or psychopathy . The
Social networks, although it is a great advance in terms of communication, does not seem to be beneficial for human relationships, especially the couple. More data: a survey carried out by a Swedish operator revealed how two out of three people spy on the messages and mailbox of their romantic partners , which is a symptom of mistrust, insecurity and jealousy in the environment of the couple. A common finding in surveys in any segment of the population is that men are more sexually jealous and women are emotionally jealous.
For some authors, however, jealousy is part of the biological mechanism of love. According to the psychologist Gregory L. White, from the University of California, in the USA, the need to be unique for at least one person is controlled by hormonal processes. And when the person in question does not pay us exclusive attention, we become suspicious. The book The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex also analyzes the biochemical origin of the phenomenon.
If we consider that jealousy has a biochemical origin, social networks are a weapon that turns us into vigilantes and spies of the people we have next to us. The behavior now has its consequences, however, and not just on a personal level. Since 2015, espionage towards the couple is considered a crime by the Penal Code.
