Twitter driving couples towards infidelity, break-ups: Study

Have you noticed a drastic change in the behaviour of your hubby towards you since the day he joined Twitter? It is time to take cognizance of how much time he is spending on the micro-blogging site.

According to new research, active users of social networking who are in a romantic relationship may find that Twitter-related conflicts cause relationship problems that can become serious enough to result in infidelity or divorce.

To reach this conclusion, researchers from University of Missouri-Columbia evaluated the amount of time a person spends on Twitter.

They looked at how much conflict arose between couples as a result of active Twitter usage and whether negative relationship outcomes were associated with active Twitter use and Twitter-related conflict.

"The idea was to characterise the relationship between active Twitter use, Twitter-related conflict and negative relationship outcomes," said Russell Clayton from University of Missouri-Columbia.

Clayton found that active Twitter use and Twitter-related conflict were positively associated with an increase in emotional and physical cheating, break-up and divorce.

These outcomes, however, were not impacted by length of romantic relationship.

"Since much of the social networking research is in its infancy, we do not know if other media, such as Instagram will also impact relationships in a negative way," said Brenda K Wiederhold, editor-in-chief at Interactive Media Institute, San Diego, California.

With more than 554 million active users, Twitter is one of the most popular social networking sites.

The study appeared in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.