This paper analyzes research on the psychological impact of social media usage on relationships and marriage. Several studies found that excessive social media use is linked to negative outcomes like increased jealousy and relationship dissatisfaction. However, the research also found the impacts depend on individual factors like self-esteem - those with lower self-esteem reported more negative effects from their partner's social media usage. While social media may negatively impact marriages through reduced intimacy and privacy, more research is still needed to fully understand its psychological effects on relationships.

1. Running head: SOCIAL MEDIA AND MARRIAGES
1
SOCIAL MEDIA AND MARRIAGES 2
Social media impact on psychological aspects of relationships
and marriage
Abstract
This paper addresses the impact of social media on the
psychological aspects of relationships and marriages.
Psychological aspects of marriages and relationships that are
affected by the use of social media are discussed with the aid of
various articles. The articles that are used to discuss the topic
have been peer-reviewed. Ten articles have been used for the
discussion and the position that the authors took on the same. A
comparison and contrast of the articles is given below. The
strengths and the weaknesses of each article in an attempt to
address the impact of the psychological aspects of relations and

2. marriages are discussed in detail. The evidence presented in
each of the articles is illustrated.
Social media impact on psychological aspects of relationships
and marriage
Researchers have been making efforts to conceptualize the
nature of relationship between the usage of social media and
relationships especially marriages. Most of the literature points
to the social media as a tool that is psychologically detrimental
to the marriages. There appears to be a lack of concrete
empirical research that links the two issues. Furthermore,
Psychological research has not been able to establish whether
social media impacts couples in relationships differently as
compared to other users. This paper explores the research that
has been done on the psychological effect that the use of social
media has on people in relationships and marriages. The paper
analyzes the findings that various researches have come up with
in establishing the psychological link between use of social
media and the deteriorating of relationships. It seeks to
establish the link between the psychological effect of using
social media to relationships and marriages.
This paper has been broken down into four sections where
the first part looks into the general use of various social sites;
the information that is revealed and the psychological
implications that may arise from the use especially among
couples. The second section analyses the research that has been
done on specific media tools that is Facebook and Twitter, and

3. the psychologically based relationships that arise. The paper
then closely looks into some of the specific issues that arise
with the usage of social media which are jealousy and
happiness. The last section then looks into the institution of
marriage, its dynamic nature and the impacts usage of social
media has on married people.
It is no secret that every aspect of our lives has become
more digital in nature. Most of the people in the world have
various aspects of their lives shared over the internet through
the various platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Brake (2014), makes a good analysis of the usage of these
platforms that enable people separated by millions of kilometers
are able to keep in touch and inform each other the progress of
their lives while highlighting the consequences that come with
this sharing of information. The author here reveals that once
people go online, they lose control of their information. When
looked at from the psychological perspective, the use of social
media affects the behavior of people once they are offline. This
means that in relationships and marriages, the behavior
expressed by couples is partly informed by the activity in
various social media platforms.
In the article by Sokol (2013). Sokol says that social media
affects the self-image and the self-esteem of people especially
to those who use the platform most of their time. He presents it
that, when a person spends most of their time chatting in the
one or more of the social media sites, they lack the confidence
to speak real people other than their computers or whatever
technological device they use. They are not able to express the
so much love they write about in the social media when now
they have a real person talking to them. It is due to lack of self-
confidence and damaged self-esteem. Even in a marriage Sokol
says that self-esteem is very crucial to the blossoming of such a
blessed union. Suval (2013) in his article adds that for confident
users of the social media, the chances that they are dating or are
in a relationship with more than one person is very high. Such
people might not see the dangers of having multiple partners.

4. All that they see is they enjoying life. Given that they do not
disclose such information to those that they date, it is highly
probable that if these people find out and they trusted so much
on this person, they might choose never to date again. The
reason could be the due to psychological trauma that they face.
On the other hand, if they develop the mentality that everyone
cheats, they might end up having relationships with multiple
partners.
Drouin& Dibble (2014) brings another perspective of
relationships that are born out of the use of social media which
have been noted that such relationships donot last. The authors
employ the psychological perspective to explain this situation
by noting that people may not reveal all their traits online.
Furthermore the continued use of social media impacts on the
behavior of couples with most of them engaging in acts of
suspicion, monitoring and jealousy. Such behavior according to
the author, are clear roads leading to breakups. Brake (2014)
goes deep into the criminal activity that mainly targets adults in
the internet such as commercial exploitation and cyber-stalking.
He however correctly points out that research has not focused
on the interpersonal harms that come with the usage of social
media. Drouin& Dibble (2014) and Brake (2014) present the
general use of social networking sites well but the weakness in
both articles is that they fail to focus on specific groups. The
consequences they point cannot apply uniformly to different
groups in the society such as the married and the unmarried
people.
Research focusing on specific social networking site (SNS)
has been conducted and despite this research not being
conclusive some important discoveries have been made on the
impact of social media use on psychological aspects of
relationships and marriage. Twitter and Facebook being the
most widely used sites have had researchers looking into them
and various relationships have been established.
Clayton (2014) conducted a study that sought to identify
how the usage of twitter resulted to a number of negative

5. interpersonal relationship outcomes. The strength of this
research was that it was able to establish an actual relationship
between active twitter use and negative outcomes in
interpersonal relationships with focus being on the married. The
results from this research build on the growing body of
literature that active use of Twitter leads to negative
psychological effects in a relationship which can be exhibited
through an increase in the number of conflicts that are traced
back to twitter. These conflicts mostly result into cases of
breakups and divorce that are not observed to passive users of
Twitter. The weakness in Clayton’s article is that a generalized
variable of “twitter usage” is used. It fails to point at specific
and harmful uses of twitter since not all activities in twitter
have the potential of having negative results.
Facebook and the effects that it has on couples are similar
to the ones highlighted above in the study about twitter. With
the site posting increasing usage among couples especially
young ones, Elphinston & Noller(2011) notes that it poses a
great potential to complicate relationships. The strength of the
article is the effort the author goes into to describe life on
Facebook and the real life while explaining how couples find it
difficult to differentiate aspects of their life when in Facebook
and when offline. It becomes clear that high levels of Facebook
intrusion mostly had psychological effects to couples. These
effects were expressed mainly through dissatisfaction in
relationships, jealous and surveillances (Muise, Christofides &
Desmarais, 2009). The major weakness in Elphinston &
Noller’sarticle is the failure of taking into consideration the
contribution of extenuating factors in the established
relationship. The failure of mentioning such factors
compromises the validity of the findings.
Lickerman (2010) also sees the social media excessive use
although on the relationship with friends and relatives. He says
that, today it is very common to find friends walking together
and each one is busy on their phone. If you observe them
keenly, you will notice that they occasionally laugh yet if you

6. dig in deeper into their connection, they do not even say good
morning to each other. They connect via the social media. This
is a habit that Lickerman says ruins the interactive social nature
of humans. People need to talk and not connect in group via the
social media. Val (2014) indicates that use of social media
increases the chances of stress and depression among its users.
The two psychological impacts are as a result of various factors.
For example Val says that if you take at least four hours into
the a social media site just reading about the relationships of
others, you will notice that there are things going on in those
relationships which are not happening in yours. The moment
that you start wishing for such thing is the moment you will
begin to experience stress. This will escalate if your partner
does not agree with what you want. If you continue to nag about
such issues with your partner then you are likely to fall into
depression. Sometimes people just part ways if they realize that
they can’t take it anymore.
Reviewing most of the literature appertaining social media
use and the psychological effect to relationships reveals that
two aspects commonly rise; jealousy and lack of satisfaction
that comes in the form of lack of happiness. Muise, et al (2009)
in the study about the usage of Facebook try to establish
whether jealousy in relationships increased as a result of one
partner being obsessed online. This study makes a good point of
first realizing that there are the inherent and acceptable levels
of jealousy that are in relationships. The question that this
research answers is whether the usage of Facebook
psychologically affects couples such that the levels of jealousy
increase. The results of this research went on to build on the
growing body of research that links social media to negative
occurrences in romantic relationships and marriages. Women
were found to have increased levels of jealousy compared to
men when their partners become more indulged in Facebook.
The weakness of this article comes in the failure to
acknowledge the input of innate individual traits that predispose
one to being jealous. Facebook may be a catalyst to an existing

7. jealousy situation in an insecure partner.
The problem in Muise’s article is solved by the findings
that Utz & Beukeboom(2011) made about social media use.
According to them, the issue of whether couples become more
jealous when the partners become more and more engaged in
Facebook depends on the self-esteem of those involved. From
the study it becomes clear that the psychological effect that
social media has on the behavior of couples depends on the
esteem of the couples. For the couples with high self-esteem,
their partners’ involvement in social media and especially
Facebook made them happy while individuals with lower self-
esteem and who had trust issues were mentally affected by the
partners’ activity in social media and went on to develop the
behavior of monitoring the activity of their partners in
Facebook which ultimately resulted into jealousy. This study
therefore brings an emotional twist to the psychological effects
that social media has on couples and by introducing the self-
esteem factor, the results become more believable.
Marriage as an institution differs from other kinds of
relationships in the society especially due to the obligation to
behave in certain ways towards their partners. These
expectations spill over to the area of social media usage by the
individuals. According to Williams, Sawyer& Wahlstrom
(2012), some of the major foundations of marriage are being
open, sharing and talking out. The use of many of the social
media platforms means that some level of privacy by users is
achieved and this has the potential of psychologically impacting
the relationships. The strength of this article is the focus it has
on marriages. It uses the basic foundations of marriage to
explain its position and this adds more weight to the results.
The weakness of the article is that it does little to explain issues
in marriage from the psychological perspective. The authors
base their major arguments on the socially set belief systems
but fail to apply the psychological aspect. When one of the
partners became more involved into online activity and tended
to ignore the other, a feeling of being excluded rises. This

8. psychological effect comes with the rise in conflicts that such a
couple would experience. Another aspect in the relationship
between married couples is that they are expected to share and
talk whenever something bothers them. When one of the
partners prefers to go into Facebook or Twitter to spill out their
thoughts, the other partner is likely to sense mistrust and the
inability to share.
Despite marriage being central to most adults’ lives, the
rates of divorce have been reported to be on the increases
(Stevenson & Wolfers, 2009). The biggest strength of this
article is the kind of analysis that the author does on the
traditional causes of divorce which results to a realization that
social media is fast becoming a predisposing factor to divorce.
This therefore builds on the body of literature that attaches
negative outcomes to marriages and these outcomes can be
psychologically explained. In a study done to establish the link
between usage of social networking sites and negative
interpersonal relationship outcomes found out that Facebook-
related conflicts are a common occurrence for active social
media users. (Clayton, Nagurney& Smith, 2013). Social media
without doubt has some psychological effects to marriages and
these are seen through issues such as emotional and physical
cheating not forgetting the increased divorce rates. The
Weakness in both articles is the lack of a clear psychological
explanation to the issue of divorce. The authors could have done
more in analyzing the predisposing factors to divorce from the
psychological perspective.
From these findings, I have come up with a hypothesis that
the use of social media has a negative psychological effect on
aspects of marriage and other relationships. Through the studies
highlighted above, it is clear that when one or both marriage
partners become overly involved in social media, the response
of the other partner towards them changes. Couples are
therefore psychologically affected such that they begin to
exhibit negative traits such as jealousy and being unhappy. A
link has also been established between breakups and divorce to

9. social media. The literature I have reviewed has further cleared
my view on this topic. I have established that there is a lack of
literature that explicitly focuses on the psychological aspect of
social media use among couples. This is the gap that I would
like to fill through successfully answering the study question.
This article approaches the psychological impact of social
media into relationships and marriages by looking into four
aspects. The first part analyses the general patterns of social
media use among couples and then looks into face book and
twitter as the specimen to analyze the consequence of the usage.
The paper then looks analyses marriage as an institution and the
danger that couple found them in when using social media.
Despite the extensive nature of studies done on the relationship
between social media and negative outcomes in relationships,
the psychological perspective top this is still lacking. This is
the gap that this paper ultimately plans to cover by offering a
more concrete evidence of how social media impacts
psychological aspects of relationships and marriage.
References
Brake, D. R. (2014).Sharing our lives online: risks and exposure
in social media. Palgrave Macmillan.
Clayton, B. (2014). The third wheel: the impact of Twitter use
on relationship infidelity and divorce. Cyberpsychology,
Behavior, and Social Networking.
Clayton, R. B., Nagurney, A., & Smith, J. R. (2013). Cheating,
breakup, and divorce: is Facebook use to
blame?.Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking,
16(10), 717-720.
Coyne, S. M., Stockdale, L., Busby, D., Iverson, B., & Grant,

10. D. M. (2011). “I luv u:)!”: A descriptive study of the media
use of individuals in romantic relationships. Family
Relations, 60(2), 150-162.
Drouin, M., Miller, D. A., & Dibble, J. L. (2014). Ignore your
partners’ current Facebook friends; beware the ones they
add. Computers in Human Behavior, 35, 483-488.
Elphinston, R. A., &Noller, P. (2011). Time to face it!
Facebook intrusion and the implications for romantic jealousy
and relationship satisfaction.Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and
Social Networking, 14(11), 631-635.
Lickerman, A. (2010). The Effect of Technology on
Relationships.Happiness in this World
Muise, A., Christofides, E., &Desmarais, S. (2009). More
information than you ever wanted: Does Facebook bring out
the green-eyed monster of jealousy?.CyberPsychology&
Behavior, 12(4), 441-444.
Sokol, S. (2013). Constant connection: the Psychological Impact
of Social Media. OU News
Bureau
Stevenson, B. &Wolfers, J. (2007).Marriage and divorce:
Changes and their driving forces (No. w12944). National
Bureau of Economic Research.
Utz, S., &Beukeboom, C. J. (2011). The role of social network
sites in romantic relationships: Effects on jealousy and
relationship happiness. Journal of Computer‐Mediated
Communication, 16(4), 511-527.
Williams, B. K., Sawyer, S. C., &Wahlstrom, C. M. (2012).
Marriages, families, and intimate relationships.Pearson
Higher Ed.

11. Hello are you available to help with a business case?
For a Data Model and Database Design (2 pages)
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ith a business case?
For a Data Model and Database Design (2 pages)
Hello are you available to help with a business case?
For a Data Model and Database Design (2 pages)
Recommendations from the previous paper: please utilize this
to craft a better paper ..
You have a great foundation for your paper. I have two primary
recommendations: remember that when you are writing a paper

12. you begin with the hypothesis and use your evidence to support
the hypothesis. I recommend starting things out with your
hypothesis and building from there. Also, make sure to check
over your work for spelling, grammar, mechanics,
formatting...some of your citations do not appear to be
formatted accurately, and there are some errors in word choice
and spelling. Just check over thigns for your final submission.
Let me know if you have questions...good organization.
Assignment 2: LASA # 1: Literature Review Paper
how does social media impact psychological aspects of
relationships and marriage?
The purpose of this assignment is to provide you with the
opportunity to select a topic in the particular area in which you
have an occupational or research interest, and to complete a
literature review of the topic, using a minimum of ten scholarly
references. This will allow you to demonstrate mastery of the
program outcomes for the B.A. psychology program.
A helpful Web site for organizing and writing a literature
review is
www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/ReviewofLiterature.html.
You may also want to review the following documents that are
available in the Doc Sharing area of the course:
· A sample literature review,
· a PowerPoint document illustrating how to set up your word
processor for APA style
· a “Guide for Writing a Literature Review”
Based on your review of the most recent, relevant research
findings on your chosen topic, submit a final version of your
literature review paper, integrating feedback received from your
instructor.
Be sure to include a research/focal question, synthesis of the
literature you reviewed, well-established conclusions, and
points of discussion and/or future research.
· Begin the review by defining the objective of the paper.

13. Introduce the reader to your focal question. What is this
question intended to address? You may state your “question” in
the form of a problem if you like. Describe the topic for your
literature review and why you chose this topic. Explain why you
think it is important. It is also useful to tell the reader how the
review is organized in your introduction section, before you the
transition into the body of the review.
· Organize your literature review paper by
themes/theories/concepts, rather than article by article. If there
is one major theme you want to highlight, state the theme. If
there are three major themes or streams of thought on the topic,
briefly name them—and then organize the balance of your
literature review around those three streams. Think of themes,
theories, concepts, lines of thought, and ideas as organizing
strategies for your literature review. Your creativity in this
assignment is not the content or findings but the clarity with
which you organize the review and create a context for
understanding the focal question.
· When you are done introducing the first line of thought, create
a new paragraph to discuss studies which present another line of
thought or opposing view.
· Your literature review should hit the high points of each
article. You should not discuss a single article, one by one, like
a grocery list. Zero in on the main theme or finding and then
move on to the next theme. Remember, this is a synthesis, an
integration of all the things you have learned. You are creating
a discussion on paper, which in turn gives the reader a context
for understanding where the scholarship has been, where it is
currently, and where it likely will be heading next. Provide
enough details to help the reader understand the significance of
the studies you cite without “rebuilding Rome.” Be sure to
evaluate the studies and offer critical comments on any
shortcomings you’ve observed or that have been reported by the
authors.
· Discuss the main findings and their implications. Given the
results of your literature review, what is/are the prevailing

14. argument(s)? What research question could you ask in order to
further develop this area of study and contribute to the existing
body of knowledge? Complete your review by drawing
conclusions about your body of research and identifying gaps in
the research which still remain to be explored, maybe even by
you! Make an argument as to why your research question is
important and relevant to the current work being done on your
topic.
Requirements
Apply current APA standards for editorial style, expression of
ideas, and formatting of the text, headings, citations, and
references. Remember to use your own words to describe and
evaluate the articles. Avoid quoting the material and also cite
works when you are discussing someone else’s ideas. Your
paper should be double-spaced and in 12 point, Times New
Roman font with normal one-inch margins, written in APA
style, and free of typographical and grammatical errors. It
should include a title page with a running head, an abstract and
a reference page. The body of the paper should be no less than
5–6 pages in length.
Assignment 2 Grading Criteria
Maximum Points
Description of the focal question or problem is clear and
thorough.
Explanation of the relevance of the topic to the field of
psychology is clear.
36
Analysis of themes, theories, or concepts is clear and complete.
Discussion of articles clearly relates to those themes, theories,
or concepts (instead of discussing each article individually).
40
Choice of articles is appropriate, both in quality and quantity:
they directly address the thesis.
Their evaluation is based on their relation to themes, theories,
or concepts.

15. Evaluation includes discussion of the methodology, and a
discussion of any obvious shortcomings.
40
Provides well-supported conclusions.
Suggestions for future research are appropriate and discuss how
future research will contribute to the field.
40
Introduction has a clear opening, provides background
information, and states the topic.
The paper is organized around an arguable, clearly stated thesis
statement.
Transitions are appropriate and help the flow of ideas.
Conclusion summarizes main argument and has a clear ending.
12
Writing follows conventions of spelling and grammar
throughout. Errors are infrequent and do not interfere with
readability or comprehension.
12
Using APA format, accurately paraphrased, quoted, and cited in
many spots throughout when appropriate or called for. Errors
present are somewhat minor.
16
Writing remains in third person throughout writing.
Word choice is accurate, clear and appropriate for the audience.
4
Total:
200