FACEBOOK, Bad for your RELATIONSHIP, especially if one of you likes to stalk the other....
Monday, August 10, 2009 To stalk or not to stalk, it is an age old predicament. Today the average stalker has so many more tools at his or her disposal. I mean seriously: Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, sensory overload for those who have the tendency to obsess.
Now though, some overly bored college students have conducted a study to see whether or not "Facebook" increases jealousy in relationships. This was actually genius, they could be on Facebook while at school conducting "research."
The study, published in the CyberPsychology & Behavior Journal, analyzed the effect of Facebook use on the romantic relationships of college students. The report concludes that there is a “significant association between time spent on Facebook and jealousy-related feelings and behaviors experienced on Facebook.”
To this brilliant conclusion, I say...NO SHIT. I've known people who got themselves into ass loads of trouble by "reconnecting" with old flames.
Myspace is the meat market of the cyberworld and Facebook is the high school reunion. Its easy to tell a weirdo from Arkansas to get lost (as is often the case with myspace), but not so much when the person asking to be your "friend" was somebody you were once involved with. When this occurs we fight the internal battle, part of you wants to say: Do they have a FUCK NO response? The other part accepts because denying them would be like admitting that your not over them. Then there is that secret hope that the EX married a totally insane proctologist workaholic or they work at a shit factory. So you accept the request because NO ONE can resist that type of temptation. No one. Married, partnered, single, whatever, we all like to compare lives. It's just human nature. The people who invented social networking were obviously brilliant stalkers and now they have all the information they could ever want just a click away.
Perhaps the really disturbing part of all this is that the college students were working on Facebook research instead of drinking their faces off with real people...Talking to other human beings in the first person is an essential tool. Its the key to the survival of our species.
No wonder they invented anti-anxiety meds. If we all just threw our laptop/iphone/tweeter meters whatever the hell else they call them off a huge bridge and went back to the old days where you could only stalk locally. There would be a lot less anxiety.
I feel it important to say that I am not a stalker. In order to be a good stalker you must have a lot of free time and be committed to the process. I forget to finish brushing my hair half way through, thus I listen to my friends discuss their varied attempts at stalking, and accompany them on the occasional drive by.
Furthermore, I would like to say that I honestly could care less what the hell other people are doing on facebook, I have 113 unanswered requests...23 new messages, and quite frankly don't have the time to add jealousy and obsession to the list of things I do in a day. I answer people according to the level of guilt I feel when I ignore them. Now that I think of it I'm kind of a bitch.
Maybe that should be the next study: Does facebook increase the perceived bitchiness in people who don't respond?
hmmmmm....I'm feeling a government grant maybe needed to help with this study. Any "researchers" out there?
cyber relationship issues, facebook, stalking in In The News 
Reader Comments (2)
If you feel the need to snoop around in your significant other's stuff, then its probably too late.
I LOVE that I'm just NOW reading this post, right after I discovered that you're on Facebook. Too funny. That, and I love the fact that you only act on guilt. That's SO dead on, it's not even funny. Wait, come to think of it, yes, yes it IS funny. Damn funny. I'd better go do the dishes now. My wife works her ass off and deserves to come home to a clean kitchen, not the mess I make all day. (And I AM damn messy. My poor wife. Sheesh.)