Can Social Media Ruin My Relationship?

Everyone needs more social media.
CNN will tell you this. Businessweek will tell you this. Women's magazine's tell us how to Twitter and even the local news stations take us through laughably novice social media tutorials.
As a social media lover I have adopted every single new tool and trick of the trade. So has The New Jersey-ite.
We Twitter and blog and social network all day long and when we go home social media follows us.
We read recipes online to decide what we're going to cook which leads to a quick check of the e-mail (it's right there, on the next tab...) and then The New Jersey-ite forgets that he was supposed to finish something quick and e-mail it off so I take that moment to gchat with Double Americano but his story is long so The New Jersey-ite is finished before I am. We sit down and decide whether we should watch South Park or something I got from Netflix..... then I check Netflix.com to see what I have on my instant watch list. This is how it is.

Months ago we vowed never to answer our phones after 7 but that rule got broken right away so we changed it to we won't answer our phones during dinner. Unless it's really important. And I once pointed out that texting isn't answering the phone and it only takes 5 seconds, just hang on......


I figured that since we were both in the online industry this would be ok. He would be understanding about my incessant iPhoning and I could be understanding about his. Except I feel like we haven't talked in a while. I tell him this via gchat.
I mean, we've talked on gchat, and Twitter, and e-mail, and in person (a bit) but I try to remember when we drank two bottles of wine on the porch and last talked.

I never thought I'd be the kind of girl that said things like "quality time" and I feel like Dr. Phil every time I even bring it up but seriously, is social media conducive to "quality time"?
Can we Twitter and text during our dinner and still pay attention to each other? (My heartfelt apologies to Jun Loayza who talks about his work/ girlfriend balance all the time.....
His girlfriend said she sometimes wants to put herself in his Google calendar to get some time and when I read that I thought "God, that's never going to happen to us." )


So we made some new rules this week about how despite all of the articles insisting that we need more social media, we are going to be removing some social media from our relationship. Starting with dinner, baby steps away from the iPhone.