Does Your Facebook Posts Bring You Closer to Your Love?

We probably sometimes lose patience with lovers who constantly post romantic messages on their Facebook 'wall' or display albums of their couple photos every day. However, recent research findings indicate that individuals who are more active in their Facebook romantic relationships are more likely to have a more romantic life offline and stay together longer. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently published a paper detailing their findings on the relationship between the way romantic relationships are expressed on Facebook and the duration of those relationships. In this study, 180 undergraduate students were asked to provide their age, gender, duration of their relationship, and their level of commitment, and to allow researchers access to their Facebook profiles to examine the number of shared photos, romantic posts, and their overall online romantic interactions. Six months later, the researchers returned to these 180 individuals and asked if they were still in the same relationship. The results showed that couples who had more romantic online interactions and indicated on Facebook that they were in a relationship were more likely to still be together. "These online posts make individuals feel like they are part of a romantic entity, thus strengthening their relationship," the authors of the paper stated. They further suggested that these individuals likely want to maintain the same romantic image in real life as they project to the outside world. They also hypothesized that romantic activities on Facebook do not necessarily mean couples are committed to each other, but they do increase their commitment. This research is the latest indication of the increasing integration of virtual and real worlds, but it is not the first. In another study published in February this year, which also examined romance and emotional expression on Facebook and its relation to individuals' real-world relationships, researchers concluded that greater expressions of love on Facebook correlate with greater love in the real world. The notion that "Facebook doesn't matter" is not entirely accurate; in today's world, declaring a relationship on Facebook is significant, if not for audiences, then for both parties in the relationship! In this context, Instagram; smart and non-smart filtering; the tenth year of YouTube's activity; fierce competition with Facebook; Facebook identifies you even without seeing your face; protests against Facebook's identification policy; changing the game for 'proxy wars'; the war against the people in the streets of Iran; the first paragraph; the responsibility of opponents and the possibility of radicalizing Iranian society; the death of the last Mossad representative in Tehran amid the Iranian crisis.