Too much time on Facebook?

A new report published recently in the Washington Post analyzed the sexual habits of 26,000 people. It turns out that this group had sex 53 times in 2014, down from 62 times a quarter a century ago. The drop off was most pronounced among married people, who now have sex 55 times a year, down from 73 times a year in 1990. Why is this? There is no clear answer, but from sitting in my chair at work, I’m hearing many complaints from spouses about how much time their partner is spending on social media or video games. Another recent study compared people that spend 2 hours or more on social media to groups that spend 30 minutes or less a day on social media. The group spending more than 2 hours a day were considerably more depressed and isolated than the ’30 minutes a day’ group. It’s not just social media, but video games also. One of my clients sleeps less than 4 hours a night because he is up until two or three in the morning playing video games. It has become an issue for his wife, who goes to bed at ten o’clock. With this, it is not a surprise that one of her complaints is that he rarely initiates a sexual life.

Another client I have becomes very upset when someone doesn’t ‘like’ his post, to the point he can obsess about this, and sometimes becomes quite depressed. My advice to him is to go out and talk with real people. I know that Facebook seems to have swept the nation. I don’t have a Facebook account. I understand that some high tech people are ending their Facebook life and doing other things. I would ask each of you to actually add up the time you are playing video games or engaged in social media. One hour? Two hours? Four hours? My belief is the more time you are doing social media or video games, the less time you are interacting with real people, particularly your partner. I’ve written this before but I think for women to want to have a sexual life, they need to feel psychologically close to their partner. Is your time on your cell phone/iPad/computer/etc. getting you closer to your partner or is it pushing you farther apart?

Terry Copeland