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Authors: Hanaa Aboulyazeid
Keywords: romantic relationships, online love, social media, Arab world, Infidelity, virtual relationships, real relationships
Abstract: The prevalence of social media use and its effects, both positive and negative, regarding the virtual relationships especially the romantic ones, was not different in Arab societies, in spite of the difference between Arab and Western societies, according to cultures that tend to conservative norms and adhere to customs and social traditions in the Arab ones. There are several factors that support the overwhelming social media use in Arab countries, due to the features of the communication process through social media, as well as, some factors have been reflected by the changes that have occurred in Arab societies in recent years. The social media have provided new virtual spaces for users of different ages of both genders to communicate with each other, resulting in the emergence of unacceptable social and romantic relationships in society. The paper aimed to review the literature regarding social media uses, identify the users’ attributes and motives to build virtual romantic relationships, reveal the impact of these relationships on individuals’ real relationships. The author used the theoretical approach by reviewing the literature to ensure the validity of researches and theories that have been conducted about the topic” the romantic relationships through social media”. The paper showed the need to conduct more qualitative researches to study the romantic relationships through the social media, study many different mediated variables to understand the relation between having romantic partners via social media and the negative social effects that are shown by researches, and conduct many longitudinal studies in order to identify the direction of the relationship between romantic relationships through social media and the negative social effects on the users’ real life. On the other hand, we need to conduct many researches on teens in Arab countries and study their relationship with different social applications like Snapchat, Instagram, and compare that in different schools( international, public), as well as, disclose the Arabic women usage of social media and its effects on their marital relationships in different Arabic countries.