Sharing Your Relationship Versus Sharing Personal Details Online

Do you know someone who uses Facebook to officiate the changes in their romantic life? Whether it’s posting the latest photo of their beau or belle, or declaring a new relationship status, individuals who make statements about their romantic life on social media are more likely to pin their self-esteem on how their love life is going, say sociologists. As researchers from Albright College found, individuals whose confidence depends on their romantic relationships tend to share their happiness more on social networking sites:

“Logically, it makes sense that relationship-contingent self-esteem, or RCSE, which has previously been linked to lower overall self-esteem and higher social anxiety, could lead someone to seek validation by systematically “liking” each of their partner’s status updates or insisting on making things Facebook official.”

While previous studies have found that people who overshare personal information on social media have a stronger need to belong to a group, the same doesn’t appear true of those who share about their relationship. In fact, those who shared more about their relationship online also tended to report being happier with the relationship than those who shared less. So next time you see another happy couple on Facebook, chances are they’re not faking it. They’re just happy.