Whether you’re aware of it or not, social media is lying to you about your relationship.
As popular terms for relationship “theories” gain and lose steam online, users gain unfounded, negative perspectives on their own relationships. These theories are a built-in part of social media’s strategy to keep you engaged—capitalizing on the human brain’s tendency to seek comfort and simplicity when overwhelmed with information.
The internet’s full of other people’s relationships. According to Pew Research, 81 per cent of social media users report seeing relationship content, and 28 per cent have shared information about their own dating lives. This behaviour can be an attempt to connect with partners or to overcompensate for less satisfying relationships, according to Psychology Today.
Posts often include buzzwords marketed as “theories”—a folk wisdom frame upon which to base relationships. Applying these “theories” to real-life relationships is illogical because they contradict real-life knowledge.
For example, the “men’s first love” theory suggests men never move past their first relationships, dooming all subsequent relationships to fail, while the divorce rate for high school sweethearts is over 50 per cent. The popular “red string theory” comes from a Chinese legend, suggesting everyone is “tied” to their soulmate through a series of past coincidences. The first love theory makes little sense in combination with the red string theory—if a man’s second love is someone he unknowingly went to kindergarten with, perhaps they’re soulmates after all.
These theories become harmful when they transcend trending hashtags and affect real-life relationships. The “orange peel theory” originated on TikTok, suggesting that if your partner is willing to perform the small task of peeling an orange for you, they truly love you. While thoughtful acts are part of healthy relationships, arbitrary relationship tests aren’t.
Applying these “theories” to real-life relationships can lead to manufactured unhappiness. In one TikTok with millions of likes, a woman explains her boyfriend “failed” the orange peel test. The comments are filled with thousands of strangers urging her to end the relationship without any other context.
For Gen Z, online spaces are major arenas for social communication. Coming of age during a global pandemic hindered Gen Z’s social development. Navigating relationships—a skill traditionally learned in classrooms, workplaces, and other social spaces—forces a generation of lost love-seekers to rely on each other’s behaviour for guidance, a phenomenon called social referencing.
As a reference, social media is fraught with conflicting ideas and negative posts about romance, which fare better in the sites’ controversy-driven algorithms. But if social media becomes a template for real-life relationships, there’s no end to the arbitrary “theories” against which people evaluate their partners—inevitably creating dissatisfaction.
Unhappiness in relationships drives people further online to avoid challenging emotions—a behaviour called self-distraction. This is when social media algorithms have done their jobs, as the information shared on social media is often pseudoscientific and generally aimed at entertaining other users. Taking this information as genuine advice can have negative consequences on real-life relationships, which are more dynamic and complex than any algorithm.
So, to avoid paying attention to inflammatory trends, first, look away. Log off, delete the app, and consider which commentary on relationships—friends, family, your own—is the most important. Refraining from posting opinions online means one less voice in social media’s echo chamber, and one less chance to be sucked back into conspiracy theories about relationships.
Marijka is a fourth-year Psychology student and The Journal’s Senior Arts & Culture Editor
Tags
pseudoscience, Relationships, Social media, TikTok, trends
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