Co-authored by Nick Lane.
This post is part two of a three-part series.
“Men are only after one thing.” “There are no good women left.” “All marriages are doomed to fail.” These kinds of self-narratives can seem common after spending hours online. Social media algorithms systematically push relationship misinformation that frames current or potential partners as adversaries. There’s also been a broader shift in people’s desire to date. Today, roughly half of singles say they have no interest in a relationship at all.
This led us to ask whether social media could be playing a role in the current romantic recession. In part two of this three-part series, we’ll dive deeper into how social media might be impacting your own beliefs about dating and relationships.
How Social Media Algorithms Work
Social media algorithms infer what you want to see based on the content you and others like you engage with. Algorithms, by design, show you content to see what captures and sustains your attention. Linger on an image or video badmouthing dating for a few extra seconds, and you’ll probably see more like it. What started as curiosity may take you in a direction you didn’t anticipate as your feed is flooded with anti-relationship content.
To give an example of how this happens, we share insights from our own experience. We were curious to see how much relationship content can differ for men and women, so as an illustrative example, we created fresh social-media accounts and examined what was shown to us. Of course, our experience is just that – our own – but that doesn’t make what we saw any less startling. Here are some of the more surprising differences we observed on the male and female sides.
What Some Men See on Social Media
For men, the misinformation we saw highlighted instances of problems women brought to a relationship. As one example, there was content portraying women as chaotic and unpredictable, with men cautioned to stay vigilant. Watching a video about who’s to blame for a breakup led our algorithm to show us more of the same. There were videos about how “all women cheat” and how “women shouldn’t be trusted.” The reality is that infidelity may be common, but it’s certainly not the norm. And yet, the underlying message was that men needed to protect themselves from partners who might exploit them – for instance, by guarding their emotional and financial resources.
What Some Women See on Social Media
The content shown to women was different, but the point was similar – that men were the sources of problems and difficulties in a relationship. For example, watching dating advice videos steered us to content framing men as a liability and warning women not to settle by spotting red flags. We also saw psychological concepts like avoidant attachment and narcissistic personality disorder misused or oversimplified when describing qualities to look out for. Less than 5% of the population are true narcissists, according to research. Yet, many people have some avoidant or narcissistic tendencies, making it easy for women to see their partners in this content, despite the inaccurate or exaggerated depictions.
What It Means for Relationships
Self-help books overstating the differences between men and women in relationships have existed for decades – most notably, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. However, the contrast between a dating advice book written in 1992 and the way content is served up by social media algorithms today is substantial. On social media, people are repeatedly exposed to these differences, potentially leading to more divisive ways of thinking about current or potential partners.
When we’re fed a steady stream of algorithmically curated content on social media, it can begin to cultivate a biased perception of reality – one where men and women are framed as enemies instead of allies. That’s because overexposure to anti-relationship propaganda and misinformation on social media can make even outlier experiences seem ordinary. The outcome is what we refer to as partner-selection-based polarization, or the widening gap in people’s attitudes towards dating and relationships. Indeed, recent data show that marriage rates are falling, with more people choosing to remain single rather than risk heartbreak.
In part three of our series, we’ll explore ways to change your algorithm so you see content that’s less anti-relationship and more firmly rooted in scientific facts.
This post was co-authored by Nick Lane, a health care practitioner interested in the intersection between physical and psychological well-being.
