Too many tweets make for divorce - study

Oxford University psychologists found husbands and wives who kept in touch using social media had less satisfying marriages.

Oxford University psychologists found husbands and wives who kept in touch using social media had less satisfying marriages.

Published Apr 15, 2013

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London - Couples who communicate using Facebook could be putting a strain on their relationship, researchers have warned.

Oxford University psychologists found husbands and wives who kept in touch using social media had less satisfying marriages.

They surveyed the types of social media used by 3,500 couples. These included Facebook, emails, texts, tweets and instant messages.

Those using more than five different channels to communicate with their loved one had a 14 percent drop in average relationship satisfaction.

Dr Bernie Hogan, from Oxford Internet Institute, suggested marital disharmony could be triggered by the stress and time pressure of constantly maintaining so many different threads of communication.

He said: ‘Using these media is great in moderation. But more is not necessarily better.

‘We need to walk back from the idea that more communication by more media is a good thing.

‘We have been drunk on new media over the past ten years. Now we realise that its absence is bad, but overuse is also bad.

‘It’s important to be accessible without being overbearing.’ - Daily Mail

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