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Infidelity And Relationships

Decent Essays

To gain more insight on how social media can cause infidelity in relationships, I searched “social media impact on relationships” and an article, written in the summer of 2015, by Lori Ann Wagner, and published by the Journal of Individual Psychology caught my eye. Wagner’s article, “When Your Smartphone Is Too Smart for Your Own Good: How Social Media Alters Human Relationships” argues that mediated communication is changing the way that humans interact with each other. Wagner states that humans desire social connections and the easiest way to meet those needs are through social media. Humans use their five senses -- touch, taste, see, hear, and smell -- to really understand their environment around them. Social media interferes with our …show more content…

Wagner claims that “Social media platforms allow...scammers… [to create a relationship] based on a web of lies” (Wagner 119). While Wagner discusses people pretending and lying to others online, the article by McDaniel and his colleagues converse the hiding and infidelity part of mediated communication. They write “partners states that they had... engages in behaviors online that they would hide from their partner…” (McDaniel 93). Also, both of the articles mention how time spend over the internet can be harmful to face-to-face communication and partner love. The article by McDaniel states that social media takes over alone time from their relationship when used too often, normally leading to marital stress and conflict. Wagner explains that social media is cutting off deep communication with other people, consequently resulting in an unableness to communicate with humans in the real world. Additionally, both articles come to a conclusion that relationships are messy and are better off without mediated communication. On the contrary, these articles discuss and argue different things. Wagner argues that technology is taking over the emotional form of love and McDaniel and his contributors argue that technology and social media are increasing the opportunities for infidelity. Yet they both …show more content…

I completely agree with that statement. When one is put in the same shoes as another, they can see and feel the same emotions that the other portrays. Empathy is important because it bonds the human connections. Another major point of Wagner’s article was that social media can cause less honest relationships. This is another statement that I found to be true. It is so easy to lie and scam over the internet because anyone can take the identity of everyone since mediated communication can block our full understanding of the environment. To debate with her statements, the reason why “People today generally prefer ‘mediated communication’ rather than personal interaction…” (Wagner 116) is because communication between this generation is very different from the past generations who have not grown up with this much technology or social media. In other words, it is much more simple to have little conversations over technology than to meet face-to-face every time someone has to say something. Also, I believe that social media allows a broader spectrum for communicating with family and loved ones. Wagner also thinks that “ obsessions with texting, updating statuses, and using Snapchat are sounding a death knell for real conversation” (Wagner 116) but I think that deep and

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