Love in the age of social media can be difficult to navigate, but one couples counselor has a trick he believes can strengthen some relationships: unfriending your partner on Facebook.
"I love my wife to death,"psychotherapist and sexuality counselor Ian Kerner told Tech Insider. "But I do not need to be her Facebook friend."
Though he's since abandoned his Facebook account for professional privacy, Kerner says when he was on the social media site, he and his wife were not friends.
"Part of the reason I did that was because, as a couple, we already have so much transparency. We're always checking in with each other," Kerner says. "If anything, what I want is a little less information, a little more unknown."
Kerner recognizes such extremes aren't for everyone, but for some couples, a Facebook breakup can be helpful.
In a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 10% of internet users who were "married or partnered" said the internet majorly impacted their relationship. Of that group, 20% found the internet's impact to be "mostly negative."
These are the people — a sizable minority — Kerner believes could benefit most from what he calls a "digital detox."
"In this age of digital distraction, couples are finding time for social media and for Facebooking friends," Kerner says. "But in many cases, when I see couples in intense therapy, they're really not finding that same time for each other."
Jealousy, emotional infidelity, and loneliness are just a few of the negative effects Kerner thinks can be mitigated by unfriending your partner on Facebook.
"With Facebook, you're in a position where you can monitor your loved one's every move. That's a mistake," Kerner told TI. "Couples need to be differentiated individuals, not completely enmeshed with each other, which is what technology tends to do."
When Kerner suggests unfriending to his patients, he says he's often greeted with mixed reactions.
"Some couples like the idea of not being in each other's business all the time, but others think it's an insane idea in an age where it's already hard to trust people. They think getting off each others social media would create too much opacity."
Still, for some couples, Kerner says clicking unfriend can decrease anxiety and depression when it comes their relationships.
Of course, Kerner works with primarily with married couples and people in long-term relationships. When we talked to Amy Muise, social psychologist and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, she told us her research found with younger people in newer relationships, people often wanted more Facebook information from their partners, instead of less.
"If there was jealousy in a relationship, people in our study said they would do things to be closer online," Muise told Tech Insider. "People even talked about giving their passwords to their partners, so they could check the parts of Facebook that aren't public."
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