Twitter Is Bad For Your Love Life

I have a friend who found love on Twitter. But apparently for most people it’s anything but good for your love life.

Take this with a grain of salt if you like (maybe they have some kind of professional competition?) but according to an OKCupid study, frequent twitter users also have shorter relationships. Because, due to this kind of omnipresent tech, we all have shorter attention spans. Says the Daily Beast,

Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows, has described how modern technology has pushed so many distractions on us that it’s possible we’ll never have our attention spans return. “It used to be that the most valuable thing on the planet was time,” John Greening, the Northwestern prof conducting the ad study, said at the time. “And now the most valuable thing on the planet is attention.”

And the data, according to the OKCupid survey, doesn’t lie:

People who used Twitter frequently, as you’ll see, consistently had relationships that were 5-10 percent shorter than those who didn’t use the social-networking site. What that tells us is obvious, says Rudder: “People who Tweet live their life in shorter bursts.”

You could also argue that there’s an element of narcissism, a disconnect from the real world, or even — depending on the content of the tweets — a work addiction. Maybe people who are active in these curated relationships have trouble opening up IRL, who can say. Of course, I know plenty of people whose friendships have deepened or who keep in better contact with old friends due to media like this. But the upshot is clear: all things in moderation. And yes, my friend’s relationship was short-lived. But — and here’s where OKCupid should take notice — she actually said that “I got to know him on Twitter way better than I would have through a dating site.”