Are You and Your Significant Other Both Social Media Mavens?

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira,

on May 02, 2008,

I started thinking about how spouses and partners react to social media yesterday, after receiving a few comments about my interactions with my husband on Twitter. We probably aren’t the typical couple, having met in an online chat room in 1995, and we have been known to IM each other across the couch rather than have an actual conversation. However, until a few days ago, he’d been avoiding Twitter completely, and I hadn’t realized what a change it would be to have him using it. Now, any of our bickering that would normally be confined to IM has made its way into the public timeline, leading to what I believe is my first profanity on Twitter in a year of use.

Tara Kelly from PassPack noted the exchange, and admitted that she also IMs in the same room, mainly because it’s easier than verbalizing links you wish to share. But still, she was amused by the exchange as well, and my husband earned a new follower as a result.

The more we started talking about it later, however, and in conversations I’ve had with others, I realize we aren’t the typical couple. My husband may not like social media, and he doesn’t use it nearly as much as I do, but he does understand it. Working in tech himself, he understands that the majority of the people either of us interact with online are male, and as a result, the majority of the friends I’ve made online are male as well. I have one friend who liked my blog and tracked down my IM name. It took me a few months to realize I HADN’T met this person on a forum I thought we were both on, but in the meantime, we are still friends, chat regularly (although he has unfollowed me on Twitter since he agrees with Louis Gray that I talk too much), and my husband has never thought a thing about it.

There are many other couples out there, however, where one partner is the social media user and the other doesn’t get it. I’ve spoken to at least two people this week with different situations, but in both cases, they are involved with people who aren’t as savvy online, and are concerned with some of the time spent and/or relationships formed online. Are we still in that When Harry Met Sally mentality that two people of the opposite sex (or same sex in many situations) can’t be friends, even online, without some sort of sexual or additional emotional relationship at the root of it? Or do you have a partner who is completely understanding that you talk to all these people online and it’s nothing more than a newer way of making friends?

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6 Comments (Subscribe to rss)

Louis Gray - May 02, 2008 at 07:45 am PDT

I often ask my wife to e-mail me if something’s important. Don’t tell me. E-mail me. Is she on Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, etc? No. But that’s probably due to the fact that she’s a high school teacher, and doesn’t exactly want to be where her students are. That’s also why we avoid a lot of the movie theaters, bowling alleys and restaurants in the area. “We can’t go there! My students!”

So… no, unfortunately, my wife is not as crazy as I am. But I’m glad you and your husband have found common ground!
Mike McBride - May 02, 2008 at 08:06 am PDT

Some interesting thoughts. In terms of your question about friends of the opposite sex, well my closest friends have pretty much always been women, and my wife was well aware of that when we met, so since it hasn’t been something “new”, I don’t think it’s really been a large issue. (There are occasional red flags, but we try and deal with them appropriately and do what is necessary to keep us both comfortable with what’s going on.) On the other hand, while friendships online or offline may not cross into the realm of sexual there are “additional emotional relationships” aspects to any friendship you have of either sex. The reason we make attachments with people is to satisfy our own emotional need for connection, and no marriage is so completely emotionally satisfying that we don’t need other connections.

All that being said, as to the basis of your post, my wife and I are both somewhat active on social networking sites, we’ve both been bloggers for years, and we both have made friends of both sexes online, some of which have crossed over to the real world. None of it has necessarily changed the way we communicate with each other that much, we still do that face to face, or in email if we’re not face to face, but it has given us an avenue to interact with other people and form various connections with people. I’m more public online than she is, but that’s because we are trying to do different things with our online personas.

The thing that makes it easy for us not to feel oddly about the relationships made online is a combination of the fact that we’re both doing it, and can easily keep an eye on what the other is doing, and as I mentioned about my offline friendships, the behavior hasn’t been a change from the way we each behaved when we first met. I think it’d be more likely to raise suspicions if a someone who wasn’t involved in social media at all, and didn’t really have any friends of the opposite sex, suddenly started spending a lot of time seeking out opposite sex friends online.
Cyndy Aleo-Carreira - May 02, 2008 at 08:26 am PDT

@Louis Now see, that’s the opposite of most teachers I know, who join JUST to see what their students are up to and give them another way to interact. As for my husband, as you can see, he hasn’t quite embraced Twitter other than as a way to annoy me. It does save me the trouble of telling him everything that Bob Lee and Rob Misek tweet, however,

@Mike I would agree that if it’s a sudden change in behavior, it’s a red flag in any relationship. But I’ve seen more than just the people I’ve spoken to this week have partners with issues, usually where one person is involved in tech and the other isn’t, sort of like Louis’ situation. Whether it’s fear of the unknown due to unfamiliarity or something else, I’m not sure, but it isn’t new with this sudden explosion of ways to have conversations.
Phil Ashman - May 02, 2008 at 09:20 am PDT

I’m a college instructor and my wife is an elementary teacher, and although she has a facebook account and uses Youtube and the web for research, she’s never really taken a big interest in social networking. In fact she often shakes her head in wonder why I would give up sleep to surf through my feeds and interact.

I’ve always mentioned how cool it is and the amazing information one is able to glean from that environment, but I think the signal to noise ratio in many networks is such that she feels her time could be better spent elsewhere. I can’t really argue with that, since after many many hours playing around in these socially interactive networks I’m still trying to fine tune my filtering process. However it certainly illustrates some of the issues that need to be resolved before this technology really hits the mainstream. It’s also a very hard problem to resolve since it is so subjective. In the end I believe it is going to take some some sort of intelligent filtering/learning algorithm that one can apply to user lifestreams to make this work effectively for the average user.
Carla Thompson - May 02, 2008 at 10:12 am PDT

My husband is a software engineer - Java, C++, Unix, the whole shebang - and has ironically never set foot on a social network. Part of the problem is that he works at the IRS and they block access to all manner of sites - Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo mail, any kind of streaming video, etc etc. (But don’t get me started on that.) In a way, he social networks via proxy, hearing all my anecdotes without having to participate himself. And he’s perfectly fine with it being that way. ; )
Cyndy Aleo-Carreira - May 02, 2008 at 01:06 pm PDT

@Phil I would think as an elementary school teacher, she’d want to keep up with what the kids are doing these days.

I agree on the signal to noise ratio, and wish there was an incredible learning algorithm that would help with that. And, you know, a plug in my head.

@Carla Aside from the number of children, I think we are near twins! My husband won’t do ANYTHING with Facebook, etc. and I only dragged him kicking and screaming to Twitter because I was talking to him about AIR and discussing Twhirl’s acceptance. He has at least one tiff with me a day now on Twitter, but I can’t see him on FriendFeed any time soon, even in spirit. I don’t even think he uses an RSS reader anymore, even though he was the one who first introduced me to them, and got me blogging… on JRoller, no less!