Digital Love: The Internet and smartphones are one of the constant sources of anxiety and tension in many pairs, analysts from the independent research center Pew Research say. Every fourth of the interviewed users living with a partner or spouse complained that its partner is distracted on its phone when they spend time together, and 8% quarreled because one of them spends too much time online.

In addition, thanks to social networks everyone can get access to a huge amount of personal information about his current or potential partner, which can easily become a reason for jealousy or doubt, notes American psychologist Dan Slater in his book “Love in the era of algorithms.”

“You see what each of you publishes – as if you are living a different life, and for some relationships it becomes a kind of test,” Slater says. “If you do not trust the person completely, you will have paranoia against the background of that personal information that looms in your eyes day after day.”

Smartphones and the Internet externally pull people together, but distance them mentally – this is the opinion of many psychologists involved in research on the impact of digital space on personal and social life.

But every medal has two sides. With the advent of advanced applications for finding partners, the number of depressed states associated with loneliness has significantly decreased. This is due to the improvement of the match search algorithms. If several years ago you could choose a potential partner only by several criteria, then today everything is much more complicated: algorithms are able to find you an interlocutor or a future family member, based on dozens of complex parameters. Sites such as https://uabrides.com affect the personal life of people positively because they provide an opportunity to find a couple and still maintain privacy, thanks to the advanced security system of the site. If before the use of dating sites was a risky business, if you avoided publicity, today there are no problems with this.

In addition, the digital space has opened new opportunities for communication. Some conflicts, which could not be solved in a live communication, are successfully resolved by SMS or text messages in popular instant messengers. When we correspond, the level of empathy is lower than when we communicate in person. This allows you to eliminate many emotional and psychological barriers, which makes communication less stressful and more frank.

Undoubtedly, high technology has tremendous potential for improving a person’s personal life. The main problem is that a decade ago high technology was the property of a small category of citizens who have a high income or involved in scientific work using these technologies. However, today high technologies are directly in the hands of millions of users who do not fully understand the principle of their operation and the potential they contain. People need to learn how to make good use of scientific goods. Fortunately, this trend already exists, so there is reason to believe that with time the level of anxiety associated with the influence of smartphones and the Internet on personal life will significantly decrease.

For more in-depth study of the problem, we recommend reading Dan Slater’s book “Love in the Era of Algorithms”. The author carefully studied the issues of communication in a publicly accessible digital environment. Remember that reading such books is your direct responsibility if you are a conscious person who wants to be responsible for your life.

By Web Team

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