Communicating Commitment: A Relationship-Protection Account of Dyadic Displays on Social Media

Interested and Instrumental: An Examination of Instrumentality Regulation With Potential Romantic Partners

Instrumentality-the extent to which one facilitates another person's goal progress-has been described as the Rosetta Stone of attraction, and promotes closeness in ongoing relationships. Yet prior work has not examined whether people might regulate their instrumentality in contexts in which they desire (vs. do not desire) attraction or closeness with others. Four studies, employing imagined online scenario and in-lab experimental paradigms, examined whether people strive to be more instrumental to potential romantic partners (targets) under conditions that lead them to be more (vs. less) romantically interested in those targets. Single participants were more romantically interested in romantically available versus unavailable targets, which in turn, was associated with greater willingness to be instrumental. Results for romantically involved participants were less consistent. Implications and future directions are discussed.

Facebook and Suicidal Behaviour: User Experiences of Suicide Notes, Live-Streaming, Grieving and Preventive Strategies-A Scoping Review

BACKGROUND

Facebook represents a new dimension for global information sharing. Suicidal behaviours and attempts are increasingly reported on Facebook. This scoping review explores the various aspects of suicidal behaviours associated with Facebook, discussing the challenges and preventive measures.

METHODS

PubMed, Google Scholar, and Scopus were searched for related articles published in English up to October 2021, using different combinations of "Facebook" and "suicide". A group of experts comprising consultant psychiatrists screened the records and read the full-text articles to extract relevant data. Twenty-eight articles were chosen as relevant and included in the review under four selected themes.

RESULTS

Facebook impacts on suicidal behaviours in different aspects. Announcing suicides through sharing notes or personal information may lead to the prediction of suicide but be harmful to the online audience. Live-streaming videos of suicide is another aspect that questions Facebook's ability to monitor shared contents that can negatively affect the audience. A positive impact is helping bereaved families to share feelings and seek support online, commemorating the lost person by sharing their photos. Moreover, it can provide real-world details of everyday user behaviours, which help predict suicide risk, primarily through novel machine-learning techniques, and provide early warning and valuable help to prevent it. It can also provide a timeline of the user's activities and state of mind before suicide.

CONCLUSIONS

Social media can detect suicidal tendencies, support those seeking help, comfort family and friends with their grief, and provide insights via timelining the users' activities leading to their suicide. One of the limitations was the lack of quantitative studies evaluating preventative efforts on Facebook. The creators' commitment and the users' social responsibility will be required to create a mentally healthy Facebook environment.

Social media and close relationships: a puzzle of connection and disconnection

Social media and well-being have been a subject of intense debate in research, policy, and the popular press. In this review, we discuss social media use and well-being in the context of close relationships, including romantic partners, friends, and family, by drawing on research that connects social media use to both relational connection and relational disconnection. In an effort to disentangle a puzzle of connection and disconnection, we argue for the duality of social media effects in close relationships in which behaviors that facilitate connection and disconnection are intertwined. We call for research to develop frameworks that focus on (1) the interplay of social media behaviors and (2) the relational processes that underlie the twists and turns of social media connection.

#Happyanniversary: Gender and age differences in spouses’ and partners’ Twitter greetings

Research and theory suggest that men, on average, are inhibited from expressing vulnerable emotions such as love, whereas women do so more readily. Based on theories of gender socialization and social media uses and gratifications, we conducted a content analysis of gender differences in the domain of wedding and other relationship anniversary greetings delivered on Twitter (N = 414 tweets). We tested for gender as well as age differences in three areas: symbolic (emoji), photographic, and verbal content. As hypothesized, women were more likely to use emojis than were men. Most tweeters who included photographs in their greetings used photos of themselves and their partners today, although some subgroups of men and women preferred photos from their weddings. Age-related differences were clear: young-adult tweeters preferred symbolic emojis to deliver their anniversary greetings, whereas older/middle-aged adults opted for verbal/textual communication, particularly in the areas of tribute and inspirational statements and humor. Results are discussed in terms of gender-role socialization, social and cultural norms, and modes of communication (e.g., written letters and notes, smartphone texts) during different historical eras.