People who describe themselves as addicted to social media are far more likely to flirt online, message an ex, and hide conversations from their partner than people who don’t. A 2025 study of 765 adults in romantic relationships, published in The Family Journal by researchers Irum S. Abbasi and Jayson L. Dibble, found that social networking site addiction correlated with what they termed “social media infidelity-related behaviors” at r = .43, a strong statistical relationship. The same addiction scores correlated negatively with overall relationship satisfaction, at r = -.15. Character has little to do with it, according to the data. Screen time and compulsive checking habits appear to matter more than most people assume.
What Counts as a Social Media Infidelity-Related Behavior
Abbasi and Dibble’s questionnaire, given to participants ages 18 to 77 with a mean age of just under 28, measured behaviors like flirting with people outside the relationship, reconnecting privately with former partners, and concealing certain messages or contacts from a current partner. None of these behaviors necessarily involve physical contact with anyone, which is exactly why they tend to slip past the traditional definition of cheating that most couples operate under. The researchers found that these behaviors didn’t just correlate with addiction; they actively changed how addiction related to satisfaction. At low levels of these behaviors, heavier social media use predicted lower satisfaction, as expected. At high levels, the relationship flipped, which the authors cautioned likely reflects a measurement quirk rather than proof that flirting behind a partner’s back somehow improves a relationship.
This Isn’t a One-Off Finding
Abbasi has been building this case for years. Earlier research she conducted, summarized by PsyPost, spanned four separate studies with sample sizes ranging from 252 to 578 partnered adults. One study of 365 partners found that social networking addiction predicted infidelity-related behaviors like chatting with exes and hiding conversations, with age moderating how strongly the effect showed up. Another, covering 417 committed Facebook users, found that romantic disengagement rose alongside Facebook addiction regardless of how committed the relationship was on paper. Commitment, in other words, doesn’t appear to inoculate anyone against what compulsive use does to a relationship.
Younger Users Carry More of the Risk
Across Abbasi’s body of work, younger participants consistently scored higher on social media addiction measures than older ones, and age moderated how strongly that addiction translated into infidelity-adjacent behavior. That tracks with what most people already sense about digital-native dating: younger adults spend more time in spaces where an ex’s profile, a stranger’s flirtatious comment, or a private message thread is a single tap away. The behaviors researchers are measuring aren’t exotic. They’re the ordinary, low-friction habits of checking a notification, replying to a message a partner wouldn’t love finding, or liking a photo that used to belong to a different relationship entirely.
How Researchers Actually Measure “Addiction” Here
None of these studies are using “addiction” loosely. Abbasi and Dibble’s measure, like the addiction scales used in her earlier work, asks people to rate how much they think about social media when they’re not using it, whether they’ve tried and failed to cut back, and whether use interferes with sleep, work, or in-person relationships. It’s the same clinical framework used to study behavioral addictions more broadly, not a casual survey question about how many hours someone spends scrolling. That distinction matters, because it means the correlation with infidelity-adjacent behavior isn’t really about social media use in general. Plenty of heavily partnered adults use these platforms constantly without any of the boundary-blurring behaviors researchers measured. The risk factor is the compulsive, hard-to-control relationship with the platform, not the platform itself.
The Real Takeaway Isn’t About Willpower
None of this research argues that social media causes cheating in some direct, mechanical way, and plenty of heavy social media users never engage in any of these behaviors. What the data consistently shows is a pattern: the more compulsively someone uses these platforms, the more likely certain boundary-blurring behaviors become, almost as a byproduct of how much time and attention the apps are pulling. Treating infidelity as purely a character failing misses a variable that’s easier to actually change than character is. Reducing the amount of unsupervised, compulsive scrolling time might do more for a relationship’s health than any conversation about trust ever could.
