The Psychology of Oversharing Facebook Couples

The Atlantic: 

Okay, so maybe you don’t want to know the nickname that girl from your high school has given her new paramour, just like you don’t particularly want to know the color of the daisies he bought her last week, or what they ate on their anniversary date, or the fact that he is, hands down, the best boyfriend ever. Surely, there are other, more valuable things that could be taking up the space in your brain currently occupied by the knowledge that she’s the luckiest girl in the world.

But chances are you know these things anyway, because Facebook knows them, too.

…

Logically, it makes sense that relationship-contingent self-esteem, or RCSE, which has previously been linked to lower overall self-esteem and higher social anxiety, could lead someone to seek validation by systematically “liking” each of their partner’s status updates or insisting on making things Facebook official: “There is positive correlation between your self-esteem being contingent on relationships and it being contingent on other things external to you (e.g., others’ approval),” lead study author Gwendolyn Seidman told me in an email. “Those high in RCSE feel the need to show others, their partners and perhaps themselves that their relationship is ‘OK,’ and thus, they are OK.”

Read the whole story: The Atlantic