Research Question
Academic and public interest has been in social media overuse, especially in romantic relationships. Using the time of social media use as one variable and the degree of satisfaction with romantic relationships as the other, the present research project is based on the question of their relationship, namely: What is the relationship between the level of satisfaction with romantic relationships and the tendency to overuse social media?
Rationale of the Research Question
The present study design is built around two attributes of human daily life: a romantic relationship is a social interaction between two people based on emotional, sexual, psychological, and communication attraction. The work focuses on patterns of social media use and, thus, the specific time an individual spends on a smartphone/tablet/computer, scrolling through news feeds, watching short videos, or texting. Several studies are showing the existence of a relationship between the selected variables.
From a psychological and social science perspective, the behavior associated with excessive distraction on the phone is called phubbing. Phubbing has repeatedly been shown to be a pattern that leads to lower relationship satisfaction and decreases the self-efficacy of the other partner (David & Roberts, 2021; Zhan et al., 2022). However, phubbing is a common behavioral variant of distraction and does not answer the question of the relationship between social media use and satisfaction.
The distinction is that classic phubbing involves playing games, watching movies, and other activities besides surfing social media that may be feasible from a personal gadget (Zhan et al., 2022). Focusing only on social media eliminates the scarcity of valuable data and creates additional aspects to explore. As social media is primarily a communicative digital tool, its use may induce feelings of jealousy, distrust, and envy between partners, negatively affecting the overall satisfaction level of such relationships.
Hypothesis
The working hypothesis of the present study was formed based on the available literature evidence. The null hypothesis postulates that the timing of social media use does not affect satisfaction with romantic relationships. The alternative hypothesis indicates that the time of social media use impacts the degree of satisfaction with romantic relationships. The project’s hypotheses are non-directional and can be tested using two-tailed tests.
Description of the Experiment
The unit of study is the romantic couple, the union of two partners, male and female, who can be measured on both variables at once. The population of this study is adults — over 18 years of age — who have access to and actively use social media daily and have a romantic partner with a relationship duration of at least six months. The criteria used in this population suggest that the sample base will be predominantly young adults, but the proportions of older generations are not excluded.
A simple random algorithm will be used to access the sample. An invitation link for respondents to participate in the study will be posted on social media: this will ensure that participation in the project is voluntary and that the participants are unfamiliar with the author and each other and are randomly assigned to the sample. To ensure that bias is minimized as much as possible, the invitation link to the project will be posted on as many social networks and communities as possible, providing increased reach.
Relationship satisfaction is a continuous variable measured by self-report: the respondent will be asked to rate this indicator once a day on a hundred-point scale. Time spent on social media is also a continuous numeric variable measuring minutes and assessed by smartphone apps or self-reported by the respondent. It is proposed that the measurements be taken over ten days: the respondent will be asked to enter data on the two variables once a day for ten consecutive times.
Both partners in a couple will be assessed at once, which means that 20 satisfaction data points and 20 time points, 10 for each partner, will be collected from each couple. The data for each partner will be averaged; an example fragment of potential data is shown in Figure 1. Then, the data for each couple on the variables will be averaged, as shown in Figure 2. This approach will consider both partners’ views in a romantic couple, reduce the likelihood of bias resulting from averaging, and create balanced distributions of the variables.
Critique of Results
The results obtained for the sample will allow regression and correlation analyses to be conducted for variables that determine the impact of time spent on social media by both partners and overall satisfaction with that relationship. The results of the pilot test are shown in Figure 3: this shows a downward trend between the variables with a correlation coefficient of r = -.72. The pilot testing shows a decrease in relationship satisfaction when the time of social media use increases.
Several factors are affecting the potential for decreasing the internal validity of the pilot. There is a possible attrition effect, as not every couple will be willing to participate in a ten-day project. The experiment does not consider external factors that may influence relationship satisfaction. Another vital aspect is self-reporting; the Hawthorne effect cannot be ruled out.
External validity may also be limited: using an invitation link reduces the population potential because not all couples are on social media. Describing the sample demographics may also clarify whether the results can be extrapolated to different age groups. The inclusion criteria for couples also indicate that the results will not be extended to short-term relationships of up to six months. Thus, when discussing the findings, it is critical to consider limitations that can potentially affect the reliability of the findings.
References
David, M. E., & Roberts, J. A. (2021). Investigating the impact of partner phubbing on romantic jealousy and relationship satisfaction: The moderating role of attachment anxiety. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 38(12), 3590-3609. Web.
Zhan, S., Shrestha, S., & Zhong, N. (2022). Romantic relationship satisfaction and phubbing: The role of loneliness and empathy. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 1-12. Web.