A new study has shown how individuals use Snapchat and Facebook to find out their effect on romantic relationships and which of the services invokes a greater feeling of jealousy than the other.
The study showed that since less famous Snapchat offers greater privacy than Facebook, the former was more likely to elicit romantic jealousy. Snapchat messages disappear after only a few seconds and are typically sent to a smaller number of people, affords more private communication and intimate, personal content that could evoke greater jealousy.
An online survey was conducted among users of both Snapchat and Facebook. The aim was to recruit active Snapchat users who also use Facebook by posts on social media sites such as Snapchat (network of one of the authors), Facebook, and Twitter. A total of 77 participants (31 from Scotland, 24 from England, three outside Europe, the remainder from other European countries) completed the survey.
Editor-in-Chief Brenda K. Wiederhold, PhD, MBA, BCB, BCN, Interactive Media Institute, San Diego, California and Virtual Reality Medical Institute, Brussels, Belgium, asserted that although a small preliminary study, this was an important foray into a new communication platform and with the January 2015 Snapchat update, which made Best Friends Lists private, one wonders if they will now see the fire of jealousy further inflamed.
Authors Sonja Utz and Nicole Muscanell, Knowledge Media Research Center (Tubingen, Germany), and Cameran Khalid (Glasgow University, Scotland), found that behaviors of romantic partners on Snapchat evoked higher levels of jealousy than did the same behaviors on Facebook.
The study is published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.
