Social Media to Blame for the Breakdown of Marriage in Modern Society?

29 year old Anthony D'Ambrosio wrote an article that went viral last week. The title of said article: “5 Reasons Marriage Doesn’t Work Anymore”

His points are simple and lack imagination but nonetheless people latched on and ironically, posted it all over their social media, not thinking about the truly dark message that lies beneath the surface of this article: that Facebook ruined his marriage.

inquisitr.com

Point one is about sex and point two is about finances. Both of these are personal problems and sound like general complaints that have existed as long as humanity. If we all want a pity party, we could probably blame sex or finances on everything that goes wrong. But we don’t. We man up.

Point 3 is where things get interesting. D’Ambrosio says:

“We’re more connected than ever before, but completely disconnected at the same time.”  He claims we don’t have enough personal conversation and basically, we IM too much.

“You want to know why your grandmother and grandfather just celebrated their 60^th wedding anniversary? Because they weren’t scrolling through Instagram worrying about what John ate for dinner. They weren’t on Facebook criticizing others. They weren’t on vacation sending Snapchats to their friends.”

Well, for starters, that’s a massive generalisation. I don’t “worry” about what anyone has for dinner, not even myself. I never criticise people on Facebook and actually I don’t have Snapchat on my phone (#StillGotABlackberry), so I wouldn’t Snapchat on holiday. But maybe the rest of the world is doing that, so I’ll give D’Ambrosio the benefit of the doubt and move on…

The 4^th point is ‘our desire for attention outweighs our desire to be loved.’ Er, what?

Apparently D’Ambrosio thinks that social media has “given everyone an opportunity to be famous…post a picture and thousands of strangers will like it. Wear less clothing, and guess what? More likes.”  

Okay, again, perhaps I’m social networking wrong but I don’t feel like a celebrity when I post a selfie. Yes, I’ve seen a few girls doing what D’Ambrosio is describing, but they’re normally about 14. Did you marry a teenager, D’Ambrosio? At the end of the day, I don’t know anyone who gets thousands of likes, nor would they care more about that than their relationship.

From the sounds of it, D’Ambrosio was with a girl who was obsessed with her social media accounts and not all that into him. Meanwhile, he sounds insecure and a little bit jelly. I don’t blame him. Especially if she was stripping for likes.

But at the end of the day, he married her and it’s fairly likely she already had this unhealthy relationship with her phone from day 1, so why did 
they ever get engaged? If it’s something they were both guilty of and only realised it post-marriage, then hopefully now they’ve learnt their lesson.

His final point was spookily similar to the previous two so I can’t be bothered to analyse it anymore.

My take on the situation is that our grandparents weren’t better than us at marriages because they didn’t have Facebook. They were better because they didn’t rush things, they didn’t complain and they didn’t have as many choices as we do. It doesn’t mean marriage is void and not necessary anymore, it just makes it one of many options out there.

But let this be a lesson to us all:

a.    Don’t write whilst in a moment of rage because it’s likely you’ll come across very, very single and not all that great – with social media you never know what’s going to spread and how fast it will do so.

b. when it comes to relationships, just remember the Durex ad “Turn off to turn on.” We all need a bit of human time. No PCs, no iPhones, just us. Don’t be Facebook’s next tragic victims. It looks and sounds really lame, and it’s not really an excuse, it just sounds pathetic. 

Megan Herdson

Megan is a country girl who moved to the city with some big dreams. She is studying her MA in Creative Writing whilst also managing an American Football Team.  She loves her blog and wants nothing more than to have her words read. That and to win the Championship, obviously. Follow her @MeganAtSMF

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