Researchers studied how the frequency of social media use is related to women's attitudes toward so-called "sugar relationships" - a dating format in which one partner provides the other with money, gifts or support in exchange for company and intimacy. The work was published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.
The authors relied on data from a large international survey on love and partner preferences. For the analysis, they selected adult women who answered all the required questions and lived in countries for which estimates of cultural norms exist. The final sample was more than 22 thousand women from 22 countries.
Participants filled out a questionnaire: they rated how acceptable they considered receiving material support from an older and wealthier partner in exchange for intimacy. They also indicated their age and frequency of social media use. Separately, the indicator of "cultural tightness-looseness" was taken into account - how strictly a society sets rules of behavior and punishes deviations.
Result: the more often women used social media, the higher on average was their willingness to consider such relationships. Younger participants were more open than older ones. The level of permissiveness in a country was not significantly related to attitudes toward "sugar relationships" in itself.
However, cultural context influenced the strength of the main association: in countries with looser norms, the link between social media and openness was slightly stronger than in countries with strict rules. By statistical standards these associations are small, and the difference between cultures is even smaller.
The authors emphasize that this concerns attitudes, not actual participation in such relationships. The data were collected at a single point in time, so it cannot be asserted that social media push people toward such views. The reverse picture is also possible: women with already established views spend more time on social media.
In addition, the frequency of social media use was measured broadly - without accounting for what content participants saw. National indicators also describe general trends and do not reflect the characteristics of individual communities. The sample is not representative of all women in the countries.
"I would be cautious about the conclusion that social media make women strive for sugar relationships. This goes beyond what we measured," noted the head of the work, Norbert Mesko of the University of Pecs in Hungary. According to him, the link between social media and attitudes toward such relationships depends on the normative environment.