A warning to all those wrapped up in a new romantic love affair – be careful whom you “tag” or “poke.” A new study from the University of Guelph suggests that Facebook is a cause of jealousy and suspicion in relationships.
The study, conducted by PhD students Amy Muise and Emily Christofides, found a strong correlation between Facebook use and jealousy.
The motivation for the study came from students that Muise worked with.
“We were just hearing from a lot of people that there was a popular perception that Facebook was causing jealousy,” said Muise. “It actually started with our students telling us about it, saying that it causes of lot of problems in [their] relationships.”
Their survey included 308 university students between the ages of 17 and 24 and about half of those surveyed were in a serious relationship at the time.
The choice of using university students on Facebook as a survey group was simple.
“We chose Facebook because it was the most popular website in terms of social networking in Canada,” said Muise, “We started with [university students] because it seemed like Facebook was just so popular amongst that group.”
Muise and Christofides created the Facebook Jealousy Scale to put a quantifiable numbers to social interaction. To determine people’s potential place on the scale, they were asked a series of questions pertaining to aspects of Facebook that might inspire jealousy.
Questions such as, “How likely are you to become jealous after your partner has added an unknown member of the opposite sex?” or “How likely are you to monitor your partner’s activities on Facebook?”
They were also asked one open-ended question about their general experience with jealousy on Facebook to see if any concurrent themes appeared.
Almost 75 per cent of those surveyed reported being likely to add previous romantic or sexual partners as friends. Over 78 per cent reported that their partner had already added previous partners to their friends’ list.
Muise and Christofides said they believe Facebook addiction is causing students to become increasingly jealous.
“What we hypothesized was that having access to all this information, especially without a context, might lead you to be more jealous,” Christofides said. “And feeling more jealous might lead you to spending more time on Facebook. It’s kind of a feedback loop.”
Social networking has become a new force in the way we communicate with each other but, as a new method, there are still problems that exist.
“In other ways of communicating, we’ve learned what the [societal norms] and rules are,” Christofides said. “With Facebook, because it’s so new, I think these things are still under development.”
“So what you think might be OK to post or talk about on Facebook might differ from what your friends or partner think is OK,” she said.
This study was not Muise’s and Christofides’ first foray into societal problems currently facing Facebook users; last year their research showed that the chase for popularity is making university students divulge more personal information on Facebook than they normally would otherwise.
It was from this research that they drew the attention of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, a recently-established commission to investigate the privacy rights of Canadians.
The Commissioner said she believed so much in their research that Muise and Christofides received a $50,000 grant for future research.
“We’ve proposed a project similar to what we’ve done with undergraduate students, but with youth and older, working adults,” said Muise. “The goal will be to provide awareness and education to those groups about their use of Facebook.”