Experiencing the Effects of Social Network Membership on Marital Relation
(Married students of the University of Medical Sciences in Tabriz, phenomenology study)

Ali Imanzade*

In addition to the modern educational, informational, and entertainment usages of social networks, lack of full knowledge of them may have some threats that can cause marital crisis. The present research, using a qualitative phenomenology method, aims to study the effects of social networks, membership on marital relation. 15 married students of Tabriz Medical Sciences University have been selected and interviewed based on purposive sampling. Data was analyzed based on qualitative content analysis. The findings show that membership of married students in virtual social networks has 2 main themes and 14 sub-themes. The main themes extracted of the research are the causes of inclination and the membership consequences. The sub-themes of the causes of inclination include: making easy social relation, compensating role, entertainment, performing class projects, being economical, existence of different facilities to transfer data, being informed of the news, information, ideas, and making use of life skill education networks. The sub-themes of membership consequences include: sense of marital betrayal, weakening of affective relations, being skeptical about the spouse, lowering of face-to-face relations, ignoring the sexual needs of the spouse, intervention of others in personal life, and lack of responsibility to the life.              

  Keywords: social network, effects, marital relation, phenomenology.

------------------------------------

* . PhD in Islamic Philosophy of Education and faculty member of Malayer University

Email: aliimanzadeh@yahoo.com