You may think that the mark of a mature relationship is the moment when a couple moves in together, adopts a cat or spends the holidays with each other’s families. But what about sharing an email account?
Now that’s a real commitment.
It’s a step that more than one-fourth of American Internet users who are married or in a committed relationship have taken, according to a study released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project. The study found that 27 percent of couples share an email account. Two-thirds of couples share the passwords for one or more of their online accounts with their main squeeze.
Pew’s data show that this practice is more common with older couples or those who have been in their relationship for more than 10 years, perhaps because such technologies as email, social media and other accounts were introduced after they were an item.
Still, only 11 percent of couples reported sharing a social media profile on such sites as Facebook with their spouse or partner — apparently there are some digital bridges that many still aren’t willing to cross.
The study also delved into the practice of sexting. Pew found that salacious messages are becoming more common, with about 9 percent of cellphone owners reporting that they’ve sent a suggestive text or photo. Meanwhile, 20 percent say they’ve received one. (That 9 percent of the population must be busy.)
That’s a notable increase compared with last year, when the same study found that just 6 percent of cellphone owners had sent sexts and 15 percent of users had received them. The younger the cellphone user, the more likely he or she was to sext, although there was an uptick across all age groups except those ages 55 and older.
The study also found that technology has improved “emotional intimacy” for a lot of couples. More than one-fifth of respondents said they have felt closer to their partner because of online or text message exchanges. Nine percent have even resolved arguments through texting or being online that they couldn’t mend in person, finding it was easier to hash out a disagreement with a little bit of physical space between them.
A vast majority of couples — 74 percent — said that the Internet has a positive impact on their relationships. But that number is on the decline.
In 2005, 84 percent said that the Internet was a good thing for their relationships. Similarly, the number of folks who said that technology had a negative effect on their relationships rose from 13 percent to 20 percent.
Younger adults were particularly likely to report having negative encounters through technology. Those ages 18 to 29 were far more likely to say they’ve fought about how much time a partner was spending online. A quarter of all respondents said they’ve felt that their spouse or partner has been distracted by cellphones while they were spending time together. That jumps to 42 percent among the youngest couples surveyed, as well as busy folks, such as parents, college graduates and those with higher household incomes.
As technology advances and workplaces increase their digital demands on employees, these nascent problems could grow, said Amanda Lenhart, who leads the Pew project’s work on teens, children and families.
“As the technology becomes more integrated, there are more ways for it to go wrong, more places to have points of tension,” she said.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No — we’re totally listening. Really.
