The opportunities offered by technology are increasing day by day. This increase causes us to communicate less with each other. It is a fact that social media is taking over our lives at some point. Social media has become the main reason why all our work, our lives, and what we expect from life have changed. What we see and hear in this medium has become one of the most important sources that shape our lives.
So, what effect does social media, which we have included so much in our lives, have on our relationships?
Have you ever thought about how many hours or minutes you spend on social media every day? With phones, computers, tablets… we have started to have a closer relationship than our lover, partner or spouse who is actually right next to us. Instead of communicating with the circle of friends we meet at schools, cafes and restaurants at the same table, we prefer to look at things such as who did what, where they went, how many people watched my story, how many followers I have on social media. Unfortunately, we are not aware that we are starting to miss many moments we spend with the people we are in relationships with. Being someone who can express himself on social media or showing many things in his life has become more valuable than a few hours we spend with our spouse or partner. Even when we thought we had left social media aside, we started to experience constant increases and decreases in our minds and had difficulties in focusing.
In addition, people who use social media excessively begin to develop mental, spiritual and even physical health problems. Depression, anxiety, self-dislike, dulled perception of reality are just a few of them. We leave aside the problems and impasses in our relationships and get caught up in the perception of beauty imposed on us on social media, and because we think we cannot be like the people we see there and cannot live a life like the couples there, we drag our relationships into impasses. Many questions arise in our minds, such as why we don't live in a house like them, why we couldn't buy these items, why we are not like couples who travel a lot or do a lot of sports. It started to slow down and keep us busy. For these reasons, instead of focusing on our own relationship, we started to alienate ourselves from our own relationships through the relationships of others. Unfortunately, we do not realize that when we start to be influenced by the illusions of a perfect life on social media, we put ourselves, our lives and the person in our lives in the background. Social media does not portray reality, only what people want you to see. That's why letting social media get in the way of our own lives might be the worst thing we do to ourselves.
Excessive use of social media can lead to distance, deception and addiction in relationships. After this, we may have difficulty distinguishing between the real and the happy moments that are presented as real, and we may feel unhappiness about our own relationships and lives. Let's take a look at what may occur with the increasing use of social media:
STRESS
In fact, most of the time we resort to social media to get away from the stress of our daily lives. However, the 'lives as if we were happy, everything was fine, in short' that we see in a stressful moment cause us to experience more stress. This time, stress added to stress causes us to question our lives, and instead of trying to find what went wrong, we get lost in channels where lives far from reality are displayed.
MOOD CHANGES
Social media use causes short-term mood changes. A photo, video, article or story we suddenly see in a media causes our mood to change. While seeing something better when we are good lowers our mood, seeing something worse unintentionally makes us feel proud of our life and feel happy. These sudden changes in mood can damage emotional bonds and disrupt the stability in our relationship. It's no wonder that we move away from our partner, whose mood we don't know when and how the distance between them increases. your one Adding and liking that person's post causes jealousy to start or increase between couples. People who are exposed to this situation often try to establish authority over their partners and follow them on social media platforms, which are virtual environments. A person who thinks that he is following everything his partner does can actually use this as a weapon in his relationship, with the power of jealousy. When the problem of self-confidence created by jealousy, the feeling of envy, and the feeling of inadequacy combine, relationships can come to the point of separation.
Most of the time, couples give each other their passwords in order to have more say in each other's social media, or they open a joint account and decide on each post together. In fact, restrictive attitudes suddenly appear in media that should be free.
CHEATING
Social media platforms have become the beginning or the end of most of today's relationships. Communication, which starts with a like, progresses to messaging, exchanging phone numbers and meetings. Relationships that start very quickly can end suddenly because feelings are first formed based on the person seen on social media and may not be the real person. Unfortunately, it is not difficult to see that the relationship has evolved into a fling when you start browsing someone's account for hours under a like, liking photos, videos, and articles shared from ancient times, and visiting that person's profile at every opportunity.
DEPRESSION
While we are running for our lives that we always strive to do better, we unintentionally experience the lives that we see as if we are living better without doing anything. It can lead to depression. The lives of people who live in very good homes, look very happy, have a lot of opportunities and have very good bodies begin to question our relationships, ourselves and our lives. When it turns into an addiction that cannot distinguish the difference between reality and what is shown, psychological collapses can occur and depression occurs.
SLEEP
Night. -Always artificial during the day We illuminate all our times with light. While we need to lie down in bed and have darkness to sleep, we say, "Let me read one last tweet before I sleep, let me look at this story, let me watch one last video..." and we fail to realize that the blue light reflected from the screens affects the melatonin hormone that regulates sleep and disrupts our sleep patterns. In addition to many differences that emerge as the time spent on social media increases, one of the biggest problems is disruption of sleep patterns. Having a stable sleep pattern and ensuring the necessary sleep hygiene is the main source of starting the day well and ending it well. Time spent constantly on social media as an obsession causes sleep hours to decrease, waking up with a tired mind and body, and the mind being preoccupied with the last things seen while sleeping.
SELF-ESTEEM
p>The biggest damage that social media does to relationships is the deterioration of a person's self-esteem towards himself and the person he is in a relationship with. Couples who are caught up in the perception of beauty imposed on social media and think that they cannot have the bodies, lives and lifestyles there, drift away from each other and allow cheating, which begins with flirting on social media. Social media channels are full of posts that often make us feel inadequate. Because it is full of moments when others are happiest, which makes us feel bad when we see them.
EMOTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS
So far, we have focused on the many effects of social media on our relationships. We know that it starts to make us question our relationship, life, our partner's appearance and what they can give us, causes us to lose our self-esteem, causes mental disorders such as depression/anxiety, disrupts sleep patterns, and many other things in addition to these cause us to distance ourselves from our relationships and move away from our partner.
When social media starts to take over our lives, it may be turning into an addiction. According to a study conducted at Harvard University, it was determined that the brain area that lights up during drug use is the same as the brain area that lights up when using social media. This means that with life Social media has begun to direct our lives and relationships.
Oftentimes, social media becomes a distraction in our face-to-face meetings. Our shares with our partner either begin to take shape through other lives on social media, or we prefer to engage with social media in the same environment instead of focusing on each other in the moments we are together. This causes the healthy relationship we have with our partner to deteriorate.
The things we need to do to prevent social media use from affecting our relationships are very simple. First of all, it is necessary to know that most of the things highlighted in these media are not the complete reality of that person's life. It should not be forgotten that everyone has happy and unhappy moments, but on these platforms, the best and happiest are tried to be shown. It may be necessary to be active at a level that does not affect our relationship with our partner or not to reflect it on our partner. It is very important to avoid using social media as a control area of the relationship and to know that we cannot manage our relationship there.
Finally; We should not forget that it is necessary to proceed on the responsible ground of a face-to-face relationship, instead of spouses and partners seeking satisfaction through virtual relationships, environments, and shares that have no responsibilities.
DON'T LET SOCIAL MEDIA GRIND YOUR HAPPINESS. strong>
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