Tag Archives: marriage

Social media has definitely changed the world of communication and how individuals approach their real life relationships in the public sphere. Take, for example, marriage proposals.  Proposals are meant to be a show of love and affection, to prove to your significant other how important you are to them.  This no longer means popping the question in front of all your friends and family; it means alerting the entire electronic world. Can you imagine being proposed to through twitter? Living in the public sphere has obviously affected the intricacies of private relationships and the role that outsiders play in these relationships.

As Tanya explained in “We Live in Public”, when a couple is arguing, it’s more beneficial to step back, try to understand each side, and to compromise.  But when the argument occurs in public, it becomes about egos and who “wins” the fight.

A 2010 survey shows that four out of five matrimonial lawyers claim that an increasing number of cases involve the use of social networking sites to provide evidence. One case I found shocking was the story of a woman who had her husband arrested for bigamy after seeing photos of his second wedding on facebook.  The couple had been separated for a number of years, but had never officially gotten a divorce. When he deleted said wife from his friends list, he did not alter his privacy settings and she was still able to see the photos from his second wedding.  She then had him arrested for bigamy.

Clearly social media has the ability to build relationships and tear them down.  Ultimately it’s up to the user to determine how they use the interface to affect and influence their real world relationships.  But will this have permanent effects on socialization and communication in the future? Does providing an alternate source of communication allow for freer expression or does it mimic the purpose of greeting cards (allowing us to defer the responsibility of communication by saying the words we physically can’t)?