The Impact of Social Media in Modern Romantic Relationships is the communication field’s most major, comprehensive volume of the study of social media and romantic relationship development. It is the first volume in the discipline of communication studies intended to provide an overview of romantic development that includes all types of social media, such as Tinder and Facebook. The volume contains several major communication and media scholars who have researched social media and romantic relationship development.

This collection examines romantic relationship development via computer mediated communication. The contributors demonstrate how technology can impact perceptions of love and romance.

The #1 New York Times Bestseller “An engaging look at the often head-scratching, frequently infuriating mating behaviors that shape our love lives.” —Refinery 29 A hilarious, thoughtful, and in-depth exploration of the pleasures and perils of modern romance from Aziz Ansari, the star of Master of None and one of this generation’s sharpest comedic voices At some point, every one of us embarks on a journey to find love. We meet people, date, get into and out of relationships, all with the hope of finding someone with whom we share a deep connection. This seems standard now, but it’s wildly different from what people did even just decades ago. Single people today have more romantic options than at any point in human history. With technology, our abilities to connect with and sort through these options are staggering. So why are so many people frustrated? Some of our problems are unique to our time. “Why did this guy just text me an emoji of a pizza?” “Should I go out with this girl even though she listed Combos as one of her favorite snack foods? Combos?!” “My girlfriend just got a message from some dude named Nathan. Who’s Nathan? Did he just send her a photo of his penis? Should I check just to be sure?” But the transformation of our romantic lives can’t be explained by technology alone. In a short period of time, the whole culture of finding love has changed dramatically. A few decades ago, people would find a decent person who lived in their neighborhood. Their families would meet and, after deciding neither party seemed like a murderer, they would get married and soon have a kid, all by the time they were twenty-four. Today, people marry later than ever and spend years of their lives on a quest to find the perfect person, a soul mate. For years, Aziz Ansari has been aiming his comic insight at modern romance, but for Modern Romance, the book, he decided he needed to take things to another level. He teamed up with NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg and designed a massive research project, including hundreds of interviews and focus groups conducted everywhere from Tokyo to Buenos Aires to Wichita. They analyzed behavioral data and surveys and created their own online research forum on Reddit, which drew thousands of messages. They enlisted the world’s leading social scientists, including Andrew Cherlin, Eli Finkel, Helen Fisher, Sheena Iyengar, Barry Schwartz, Sherry Turkle, and Robb Willer. The result is unlike any social science or humor book we’ve seen before. In Modern Romance, Ansari combines his irreverent humor with cutting-edge social science to give us an unforgettable tour of our new romantic world.

Adolescents and young adults are the main users of social media. This has sparked interest among researchers regarding the effects of social media on normative development. There exists a need for an edited collection that will provide readers with both breadth and depth on the impacts of social media on normative development and social media as an amplifier of positive and negative behaviors. The Psychology and Dynamics Behind Social Media Interactions is an essential reference book that focuses on current social media research and provides insight into the benefits and detriments of social media through the lens of psychological theories. It enhances the understanding of current research regarding the antecedents to social media use and problematic use, effects of use for identity formation, mental and physical health, and relationships (friendships and romantic and family relationships) in addition to implications for education and support groups. Intended to aid in collaborative research opportunities, this book is ideal for clinicians, educators, researchers, councilors, psychologists, and social workers.

Between adolescence and adulthood, individuals begin to explore themselves mentally and emotionally in an attempt to figure out who they are and where they fit in society. Social technologies in the modern age have ushered in an era where these evolving adolescents must circumvent the negative pressures of online influences while also still trying to learn how to be utterly independent. Recent Advances in Digital Media Impacts on Identity, Sexuality, and Relationships is a collection of critical reference materials that provides imperative research on identity exploration in emerging adults and examines how digital media is used to help explore and develop one’s identity. While highlighting topics such as mobile addiction, online intimacy, and cyber aggression, this publication explores a crucial developmental period in the human lifespan and how digital media hinders (or helps) maturing adults navigate life. This book is ideally designed for therapists, psychologists, sociologists, psychiatrists, researchers, educators, academicians, and professionals.

Provides an interdisciplinary perspective on behaviors and strategies used to maintain intimate relationships.

A behavioral scientist explores love, belongingness, and fulfillment, focusing on how modern technology can both help and hinder our need to connect. A Next Big Idea Club nominee. Millions of people around the world are not getting the physical, emotional, and intellectual intimacy they crave. Through the wonders of modern technology, we are connecting with more people more often than ever before, but are these connections what we long for? Pandemic isolation has made us even more alone. In Out of Touch, Professor of Psychology Michelle Drouin investigates what she calls our intimacy famine, exploring love, belongingness, and fulfillment and considering why relationships carried out on technological platforms may leave us starving for physical connection. Drouin puts it this way: when most of our interactions are through social media, we are taking tiny hits of dopamine rather than the huge shots of oxytocin that an intimate in-person relationship would provide. Drouin explains that intimacy is not just sex—although of course sex is an important part of intimacy. But how important? Drouin reports on surveys that millennials (perhaps distracted by constant Tinder-swiping) have less sex than previous generations. She discusses pandemic puppies, professional cuddlers, the importance of touch, “desire discrepancy” in marriage, and the value of friendships. Online dating, she suggests, might give users too many options; and the internet facilitates “infidelity-related behaviors.” Some technological advances will help us develop and maintain intimate relationships—our phones, for example, can be bridges to emotional support. Some, on the other hand, might leave us out of touch. Drouin explores both of these possibilities.