Lenhart, A., Anderson, M., & Smith, A. (2019, December 31) Many Teens View Social Media and Text Messaging as a Space for Connection, Emotional Support – and Occasional     Jealousy – in the Context of Their Relationships, Although Most Say Social Media Has a Relatively Minor Impact. Social Media and Teen Romantic Relationships, Chapter 4. 

Introduction

The authors Lenhart, Anderson, and Smith, have collected some data from High school teenagers in order to find the connection that these teenagers have with social media and their romantic relationships and how they use social media in their relationships. These Social media platforms can be another language used to show affection to your significant other but at the same time, they can also bring jealousy and instability to a relationship as well. Teenagers have stated that social media has deficiently impacted their lives as well as their romantic relationships in some way whether it is in a negative way or positive. The authors split the data into four sections, first they measure how connected teenagers feel to their significant others life, if they view social media as a place to show that they care about their significant other if social media makes them feel emotionally closer to their significant other, and if social media makes them feel jealous or unsure about their relationship. *No hypothesis was found while reading the article*

Method

Their focus group to collect this data was specifically High School males and females who are social media users and have experience with relationships of course. I will assume that these four sections that were being measured were put into questions for the students to answer “yes I agree” or “no, I don’t answer” and according to their answer, they’d put them in the corresponding category.

Sidenote: This article did not explain the method process almost at all, the most they mentioned was the age group and some qualifications. No survey’s or questionnaires were mentioned, but some student responses were shown.

Results

The results found in this mysterious experiment for the first category of “Feels more connected to significant others life”, 59% of teens said that yes, social media does make them feel more connected with what is going on in their partner’s life, but 15% of those teens say that it makes them feel “a lot” more connected and the remaining 35% states that social media does not make them feel more connected to their partner. The next category of social media makes you feel “like you have a place to show you care about significant other”, 47% of the teens said yes it does, 12% said “a lot”, and 45% said that they feel like social media does not allow them to show that they care. In the second to last category of “does social media bring you “emotionally closer to significant other”, 44% of teens said that it does, 10% say “a lot”, and 50% say no. The last category of does social media make you “Jealous or unsure of your relationship”, 27% of teens say yes, 7% say “a lot”, and 68% say it does not.

In the experiment, the scientist did come to notice that the answers from both genders were different, it was stated that 65% of the males agree that social media makes them feel more connected to their significant others’ life, compared to 52% of the females who also believe this. As well as 50% of the males said that social media makes them feel more emotionally connected with their significant others and only 37% of the female agreed to the statement as well.

Discussion

With the data presented, it did stand out to me that both females and males have different answers as well as different points of view in these categories/questions. It makes sense to me because it’s two different genders as well as both genders carry a set of expectations depending on the society, they live in. Today, social media plays a big role in people’s lives, with this new generation who grew up with technology and social media, they both have expanded to many aspects of our lives and even our “love life”. Teenagers have taken the advantage of this and are able to develop romantic relationships through social media. Social media is a way to hide your face and in some way make it feel as if you’re anonymous, which is why it makes sense that 45% of teens feel more connected to their partner’s life through social media, or why 35% of teens feel like they have a place to show that they care about their lover through social media, or why 34% feels emotionally closer to their significant other through social media. It makes sense because they can hide their face and it becomes easier, especially if they are shy individuals, this part of the relationship becomes so much easier since you can show these aspects to one another through social media.