I’m curious how other couples handle social media.
Do you follow each other?
If one of you opened a new account, would you say anything to each other?
If you found an account (be it twitter, Reddit, Instagram, Facebook etc) that you didn’t know about made by your partner, would you be upset?
Obviously everyone is different, but I see a lot of people talk about how someone’s phone is a very private device. I’m curious if that way of thinking extends to social media accounts.
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Do you follow each other? Yes
If one opened a new acct, would you say anything to each other? Probably… like Oh! I just found you on Instagram!
If you found an account that you didn’t know about, would you be upset? No. I’d just ask “why didn’t you tell me you had an instagram account?
We are very open wiht each other about social media. And I wouldn’t care if he looked through my phone at all. His isn’t password protected. Mine is, but he knows my passcode.
We follow each other but tbh, I don’t pay much attention to social media a lot.
We know each others passwords, know what social media we each have. We follow/friend each other on our personal Facebook and Instagram, we share many pinterest folders.
Professionally there is a stigma against same sex couples so we both agreed to say we are married but not provide additional information on our professional accounts.
We follow each other on the social media sites we’re on. We openly share our devices, email, computers, etc. It’s not that we intentionally go looking, it’s more of a “hey, can you open my phone and read off that last text message” kind of thing. We’ll even show stuff to each other and occasionally even talk about posts we’re going to make before making them.
It may help that I’ve been a home based employee for nearly 17 years and she has been a stay at home mom since the birth of our oldest 25+ years ago. We’re always home so social media is more of a combined experience for us.
My partner knows about my social media and we follow each other on the platforms we’re both on. (We also know each other’s phone passwords, but we don’t use each other’s phones except if one of us is driving and asks the other to read/respond to a text or check something else we have on there.)
Here’s why I think following someone on social media is very different than looking through someone’s phone. On social media you will only see posts that are public (or at least available to you if you’re following them). You will not see private messages between your partner and other people or their texts or emails. On the phone you will see all communications with other people.
So if your partner’s friend or sibling confides in them about something personal that they don’t want shared with anyone else in a private message on social media or by text or email, you will not see that if you’re following them on social media. If you go on your partner’s phone however, you’d be able to see that conversation. So you’re not only invading your partner’s privacy when you snoop through their phone, but potentially the privacy of their friends and family members also. And if your partner happens to be a doctor or therapist or lawyer or accountant, you could be seeing personal medical, legal, or financial information of your partner’s patients or clients if you snoop through their phone.
Our phones are not private. She uses tik tok, fb and ig, I do not. We both use reddit, I’m fairly active, she, not so much. We share funny and interesting stuff we come across on these platforms pretty regularly. That’s about it. There’s no hiding or omitting what we’re doing since it’s all benign. If a spouse sets a boundary in access to their phone, something is absolutely going on; you’re sharing a bed, and your finances but you set the limit at your phone?
We follow on social media. Don’t share passwords and that stuff because it doesn’t seem necessary but if he asked or I did we’d gladly hand the other the phone. We know the passwords to each other’s phones but neither has ever gone digging around. Just trust each other.
after some time here, i’ve made sure she knows ALL my SM accounts, logins, passwords, as well as all that for all my devices. I’ve sent all that to her in a single email. I have nothing to hide and, I believe you have to have 100% transparency. Or your fuckt. Period. She’s done the same with me. so far as I know. YMMV.
We don’t have any social media at all. Anyone who is important to us, we keep in contact with without it. But that’s just us, we don’t like social media. It’s too much of a time sucker and reality skewer.
Spouse stopped using theirs years ago so we aren’t even connected, although MIL tags all of us in group photos. I deleted IG and I feel a lot better, FB I still use because it’s the primary platform for some community groups that I follow although I don’t post often myself. We’re both on Reddit but follow different subs so our experiences with it are not the same. We did both use Snapchat for a while but deleted it
We follow each other on FB. That’s about it. I have an Instagram for the dog that he knows about but doesn’t follow. We’re both on Reddit but don’t know each other’s usernames though we do share interesting articles or photos. I just don’t do a lot of social media other than LinkedIn for work stuff. We have access to phones for emergencies or finding our phones/taking photos but that’s about it. I 100% wouldn’t look through his phone just to look through it. We are both in professions where that would be wildly inappropriate, unethical and/or illegal with regard to work information, and with regard to personal info, we both have private conversations with friends and family. I trust him to tell me anything that he needs to discuss or thinks I should know.
We only follow each other on Facebook. I have access to his IG page but we don’t follow each other. We don’t see each other’s twitter accounts. He doesn’t have Reddit or Snapchat. I do but he doesn’t look at my accounts. He knows about them though.
Oh and TikTok. We follow each other on TikTok.