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companionate love
The strong
affection we have for those with whom
our lives are deeply involved.
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Applying Psychology
in the 21st Century
Friends Online: Is Facebook
the New Student Union?
If you’re a typical college student, you
probably use Facebook or some other so-
cial networking website. In fact, estimates
of usage rates of social networking sites on
college campuses run as high as 90%, com-
pared to 33% of older Internet users. When
that many people are using a new technol-
ogy for interpersonal communication, so-
cial psychologists take note, and they have
begun to examine how college students
use social network sites (Lenhart, 2009).
One
fi nding is clear: College students use
Facebook primarily to keep in touch with
their friends. Few use it to keep in touch
with their parents or to meet new people.
What seems to interest college students most
is the ability to maintain social connections
across geographic boundaries effi ciently.
Specifi cally, social networking sites allow
them to easily keep tabs on old friends from
home while at the same time interacting
with new friends made at college (Wiley &
Sisson, 2006; Pempek, Yermolayeva, & Cal-
vert, 2009; Subrahmanyam et al., 2008).
Another way college students use social
network sites is to explore their developing
identities. Because users can control how
they present themselves to the world on a
social network profi le, it is easy for college
students to “try on” an identity by posting
selected photos of themselves, revealing
specifi c tastes and interests, or otherwise
presenting themselves in new and different
ways. The feedback they get from others
may help them decide which identities and
forms of self-presentation suit them best.
College students report that religion, polit-
ical ideology, work, and tastes in media
such as music and movies are their most
important identity expressions (Pempek,
Yermolayeva, & Calvert, 2009).
But how do social network sites affect
users’ nonvirtual social lives? Maintaining
social connections that might otherwise
have withered and died seems like a good
thing, but it may be detrimental if students
spend so much time maintaining online
distant or superfi cial friendships that they
sacrifi ce time spent on intimate, face-to-
face interactions with close friends.
New research suggests that social net-
working sites provide a less intimidating
social outlet for students who otherwise
have trouble making and keeping friend-
ships, such as those who are introverted or
have low self-esteem. One study that
tracked college students’ Facebook use
over time found that those with low self-
esteem benefi tted the most in terms of
building greater social networks through
Facebook. Students reported that they
found it less awkward to initiate contact
with people through Facebook than
through other means. They were also bet-
ter able to learn about social events and
other opportunities for face-to-face interac-
tion through Facebook postings than by
direct word of mouth, which thereby im-
proved their offl ine social lives (Steinfeld,
Ellison, & Lampe, 2008).
In addition, intensity of Facebook use is
positively related to students’ life satisfac-
tion, social trust, and civic engagement. In
short, research suggests that users of social
network sites are not disengaged from the
real world and that the benefi ts of social
networking outweigh the costs to students’
social lives (Valenzuela, Park, & Kee, 2009).
• Why might college students who use social networking sites more heavily have
greater satisfaction in life than those who use it less?
• What aspects of social networking sites allow students to explore their identities?
What might be the drawbacks of such experimentation?
RETHINK
falls into the category of companionate love (Masuda, 2003; Regan, 2006; Loving,
Crockett, & Paxson, 2009).
Psychologist Robert Sternberg makes an even fi ner differentiation between types
of love. He proposes that love consists of three parts:
• Decision/commitment, the initial thoughts that one loves someone and the
longer-term feelings of commitment to maintain love.
• Intimacy component, feelings of closeness and connectedness.
• Passion component, the motivational drives relating to sex, physical closeness,
and romance.
According to Sternberg, these three components combine to produce the different
types of love. He suggests that different combinations of the three components vary
over the course of relationships. For example, in strong, loving relationships, the level
of commitment peaks and then remains stable. Passion, on the other hand, peaks
quickly and then declines and levels off relatively early in most relationships. In
addition, relationships are happiest in which the strength of the various components
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