The article talks about the importance of using social media networking sites such as Facebook in maintaining long distance relationships. The article is based on a study conducted on use of social networking sites by people who are involved in relationships that are long distant. The article found out that there are numerous advantages of the use of these sites in maintaining the relationships of people in the long run. For example, the article talks about expressing a person’s feelings and gauging the partner’s interest in a relationship (Billedo, Kerkhof & Finkenauer, 2015).
The article has thus well illustrated the ways in which the social networking sites can be used to ensure that long distance relationships are maintained. In the explanation, readers are capable of understanding why the sites are important in the maintenance since they have conducted a proper study in which there is a measure of the importance of the sites. The article looks at issues such as jealousy, relationship quality and partner surveillance as some of the aspects that can be used to gauge the relationships through social media (Billedo, Kerkhof & Finkenauer, 2015).
The article has, however failed to look at the weaknesses of the social media sites in maintaining strong relationships. Social media sites can ruin relationships through the use of the sites in finding new relationships by partners. Long distance relationships can be ruined by partners using Facebook which can lead them to other relationships. Additionally, the social networking sites cannot tell whether a partner is cheating on another or not, thus they have a low threshold of maintaining strong relationships apart from just maintaining strong verbal communication. The author has thus failed to explain this concept presenting the weakness of the article.
Reference
Billedo, C., Kerkhof, P., & Finkenauer, C. (2015). The Use of Social Networking Sites for Relationship Maintenance in Long-Distance and Geographically Close Romantic Relationships. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, And Social Networking, 18(3), 152-157. http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2014.0469
