Un-Friend My Heart: Facebook, Promiscuity, and Heartbreak in a Neoliberal Age

Abstract

In interviews with Indiana University college students, undergraduates insisted that Facebook could be a threat to their romantic relationships. Some students choose to deactivate their Facebook accounts to preserve their relationships. No other new media was described as harmful. This article explores why Facebook was singled out. I argue that Facebook encourages (but does not require) users to introduce a neoliberal logic to all their intimate relationships, which these particular users believe turns them into selves they do not want to be.

Limiting, leaving, and (re)lapsing

“…It can demonstrate commitment to a romantic partner [8,28] or serve as means of rejecting a consumption-driven identity [18]. On one hand, the performative nature of such active resistance can frame refusal as something for an elite and therefore not emulable.…”

“…McLaughlin and Vitak [16] explore the fallout of Facebook norm violation among college students, finding 'unfriending' to be a common response. Gershon finds romantic relationship conflict (external to Facebook) a reported reason for quitting Facebook [8].…”

Pre-marital Relationships and the Family in Modern India

“…Another factor promoting these attitudes and aspects of pleasure, consumption, hedonism, and feelings of "individual space and control," is the increasing use of technology in everyday lives that also allows for a virtual and instant "away from home" spatiality. In fact, much recent scholarship in media studies has shifted attention to the impact of media on intimacies and selfhood (Gershon 2011;Miller 2011). Together these spaces and places of "away from home" infuse the youth with feelings of "writing their own biographies" (Beck 1994;Giddens 1991).…”

Uncertain Lives: Neoliberalism and the Shaping of Home Among Service Workers in Gatlinburg

“…Gershon argues that in order to do this, we must employ an “anthropological imagination” that “offers analytical tools that reveal this neoliberal labor is not merely one of replacement, but of continual translation, in which people continually struggle to make neoliberal principles livable given their other understandings of how one is social” (Gershon :544). Recent ethnographic works highlight how the impacts of neoliberal policy get translated into every aspect of life, causing reinterpretations of traditional value systems and understandings of the self (Freeman ; Gershon ; Muehlebach ). In a study of Facebook's impact on romantic relationships among college students, Gershon () notes how the organization of such online platforms reflects “neoliberal agency,” a way of understanding and shaping the self through the metaphor of business.…”

“…Recent ethnographic works highlight how the impacts of neoliberal policy get translated into every aspect of life, causing reinterpretations of traditional value systems and understandings of the self (Freeman ; Gershon ; Muehlebach ). In a study of Facebook's impact on romantic relationships among college students, Gershon () notes how the organization of such online platforms reflects “neoliberal agency,” a way of understanding and shaping the self through the metaphor of business. Freeman (2007) examines how politicians in Barbados co‐opt traditional discourse about reputation and adaptability — associated with the creativity of income‐generating activities among the poor — into an important value for the neoliberal era.…”