Red Light! Yellow Light! Green Light!

Navigating relationships in a social media world

In a world of, “camera eats first” it can be easy to get caught up in posting every detail of your life in an effort to connect with others. However, while we may be connecting with people in our outside circles, we are losing grip on important connections with the people within arms reach of us. Relationships are hard, don’t allow social media to make them even harder. 

Red Light: Setting Boundaries 

Perhaps the easiest way to navigate social media within your relationships is to make clear boundaries around what each person is willing to tolerate. Oftentimes in a relationship, there is one partner who is more private than the other, perhaps one that doesn’t show physical affection in public but at home is a cuddle bug. We first must understand that not everyone wants their lunch posted on a Tuesday afternoon or their romantic weekend trip vlogged for their Aunt Carol in Mississippi to comment on. Therefore, boundaries are important and can save you from having unwanted disagreements in the future. 

Talking to your partner about your expectations around social media is very important. A social media post can elicit feelings that may be hard to explain; like your urge of jealousy when you see your boyfriend liking his ex-girlfriend's new Instagram post or your wife making a Tik Tok about your date night, leaving you to feel alone during dinner. When we talk to people about boundaries we have to be able to understand why these boundaries are important to us, communicating our feelings and worries instead of making demands and absolutes. It’s not that you don’t want your wife to have memories of your date, but making content instead of being present during your date can leave you feeling alone and unseen. 

Yellow Light: Think Before You Post

Once we have clear boundaries around social media we must practice putting those in place by posting mindfully. Posting mindfully takes effort, we have to check in with our partners if they feel comfortable with something we are going to post and we have to ask ourselves, "Would I talk about this to a room full of strangers?” or “Would I post this picture on a billboard?’ If the answer is no, then maybe we think a little harder before we post it on social media. 

For example, when I was pregnant with my son our ring camera caught me tripping in our front yard. Picture this, I’m getting out of my car, Chic-fil-A in one hand, my keys, and the hole in our front yard betrays me. Of course,e after making sure one and the baby were okay this video was nothing short of hilarious. Now you add a popular TikTok sound to the video, as one of my friends did after I sent her the video, and everyone in the room is crying from laughing. This video is out there (good luck finding it) and I’m okay with that because it’s a funny moment, but I’m okay with it because my friend asked my permission before posting it. The video didn’t go viral, no one sent me the video after it came across their For You Page; however, we can’t always control those sorts of things. If I had asked her not to post it, and she did anyway my feelings would have been severely hurt, and our friendship would have had a rupture that would take mending. 

Now, I’m not saying that you are posting your partners' most embarrassing moments or even their most kept secrets, but if you’re not checking in with the people you care about before you post their life online it can lead to trouble. It is so important to stop and think about how your post can be perceived by those around you, how they will perceive the person you are posting, and whether your intentions are good or bad. 

Green Light: Prioritizing Screen Free Quality Time 

While social media can leave us feeling connected to people we don’t see often, or people who we care about but are far away, it is important to remember the people we have next to us. Social media can make it to where you are having an entire conversation with someone who is not even in the room with you, sometimes leaving the other person feeling ignored or not important. Making a conscious effort to stay connected means making a conscious effort to stay off your phone when you are spending time with your partner. 

To illustrate, you get home from work and your husband is asking about your day, you start to answer but notice he’s laughing at something on his phone. When you ask what is so funny he shares with you a joke (that isn’t even funny to you) straight from the boy's group chat, now you’re irritated, feeling like you’re not important enough to listen to.  Or perhaps you’re at the dinner table and your child is telling you about their science fair project. You get a phone call in the middle of their story, and you get up and answer it, leaving them mid-sentence feeling like whoever called you was more interesting. No one in these situations is intentionally trying to make the other person feel bad, but in each scenario, someone is left with a message that whoever is on the other side of the phone holds more importance in your life. 

Final Thoughts

To strengthen relationships we must put forth the effort in connecting with those we are in relationship with. Sometimes that effort is simple, and other times that effort is more complex like mindfully navigating social media and phone use. To communicate with the people around us our needs when it comes to social media we must set clear boundaries around the things we are okay with being posted about our lives, we must also respect the privacy others are asking us to hold for them on our own platforms. We must learn to be mindful when posting, slowing down when possible, and asking ourselves if this is something that needs to be shared. Finally, making sure we are putting our phones down and spending meaningful time with the people we care about. 

Let’s put the phone down and make some eye contact. Let’s put the phone down and have a conversation without any interruptions. Let’s put the phone down and spend some real, quality time with the people we love. Let’s put the phone down and make rules regarding phones at dinner, or date night, or let’s create an hour of screen-free play with our kids. Let’s put our phones down because even small moments can make a big impact, don’t miss them by doom scrolling through your phone.