Sex & Relationships

Heavy Twitter use can ruin your love life: study

Heavy Twitter use can ruin your love life, a new study shows.

Spending too much time on the social media site can lead to conflict in a marriage or relationship — and, ultimately, to “infidelity, breakup and divorce,” according to the study cited in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking.

Facebook came under similar fire last year. A study published in the same journal linked high levels of Facebook use to “negative relationship outcomes.”

Both studies were done at the University of Missouri.

The negative effects of heavy Twitter and Facebook use may extend to ­users of other social media, the journal’s editor-in-chief, Brenda Wiederhold, told TheAustralian.com.au.

“Since much of the social-networking research is in its infancy, we do not know if other media, such as Insta­gram, will also impact relationships in a negative way,” Wiederhold told the Web site.

In the latest study of 581 Twitter users, subjects who spent the most time on the site were also the most likely to report conflicts in their relationships.