Social media is both two things: ignorantly addicting and unimaginably mystifying. The former pertains to platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, while the latter relates to Facebook — which has become the preferred hub for the Candy Crush addict who finds Twitter ‘confusing’. But one thing social media is not, is the blame for your relationship failures.

“Social media ruins everything,” according to the millennial generation. I kid you not, Twitter-search the terms social media ruins and your brain will explode. Significant others are feeling the pressure of competition from social media in today’s society. And I get it: your “boyfriend” always likes pictures of other girls in bikinis and doesn’t have any pictures of you on his Instagram; and your girlfriend always laughs at other guys jokes on Twitter, yet she’d rather watch paint dry than listen to yours. But it’s not social media, it’s you.

If your relationship can’t survive the presence of social media, you’re in the wrong relationship. The issue, here, is not the existence of social media rather the power people give it. So to be clear, I by no means condone the aforementioned behavioral examples. My point is that if you’re involved with an individual who values a figurative social life with virtual strangers more than literal social interaction with you, then perhaps that’s a relationship that you should not be in.

Most social media users are involuntarily subjected to this dynamic almost daily. A random follower throws a pity party for themselves on the timeline because their alleged significant other won’t get off of it. And all of a sudden, “social media ruins everything.”

Stop blaming social media for impacting elements of your life that you control. It may come as a surprise, but no one dictates your social media experience — and how it affects you — but you. So if social media does ruin everything it is only because you allow it to. You set the temperature of your own social networking atmosphere. The timeline only possesses the power you give it.

Signed,

Sirelle