-Kathy C. Yohalem
President
Yohalem Ltd
AMONG the many small changes Facebook has wrought on American society is how some of us view, assess and even define what a relationship is.
Facebook is a world unto itself with more than a half-billion residents, each asked to report a “relationship status.” By the end of last year, almost 37 million people had changed their status to married, while nearly 44 million changed their status to single, this according to data Facebook released last month.
These statistics bring to the fore a larger question: Why do so many Facebook users agree to announce their romantic entanglements?
“What is a wedding ring, but a status report?” said Nancy Baym, an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas and the author of “Personal Connections in the Digital Age.”
But she noted that Facebook had changed the way people report developments in their love lives to the wider community, creating the ability to instantly send out an update, which, she said, “forces you to make things explicit.”
“It can force you to have discussions, or arguments, or decision points,” she added. “When you start dating somebody, you go through the transition, ‘Gee, we are hanging out and having fun,’ you don’t usually make an announcement.”
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