In an episode of my show, 'Dr. Boyce Watkins on AOL Black Voices,' we discussed whether traditional relationships end up being threatened with the advent of e-mail, Facebook, texting and all the other things that keep people connected electronically. The episode comes out in a few weeks, but I wanted to go ahead and touch on this issue, especially in light of a new study, which I'll get to in a second.

There was a time when relationships simply ended when they ended: You had a girlfriend in college and you never saw her again. That boyfriend that your husband will never know about ceases to exist. High school ended, and you only stayed in touch with 5 percent of the people you saw in class everyday. Life was simple.


Then came Facebook. Now, the irritating ex-girlfriend loiters in the background of your life, like an irritating itch that keeps asking to be scratched. You may not necessarily be cheating, but talking to her every other day just doesn't feel right. Your husband is stalking your page asking why a man called you "Peaches" in response to your status update. All of those old friends from high school? Oh, they're back. But they don't return the way you remembered them; they re-appear in the form of their parents. Some of them are recently divorced, and you can essentially guess their relationship status by how interested they are in your status updates or how long their answers are to your questions.

Life is just not simple anymore.

Rather than managing two or three critical relationships and a half-dozen others, we now have 300 Facebook friends, 90 Twitter followers, 1,200 people in the e-mail address book and another 50 or so people who might send you a text on any given day. Some of those people are individuals that you know you shouldn't be associating with, but you do so anyway. In a worst case scenario, you end up having conversations you shouldn't have and even doing things you shouldn't do. Much of this Internet mingling threatens the sanctity of millions of marriages and relationships across America.

A recent study at Duke University finds that the Internet has also reduced our ability to be intimate with one another in face-to-face relationships. The study found that from 1985 to 2004, the percentage of people who said they have no one with whom they could discuss important information has tripled to 25 percent. They also found that the average American has one-third fewer true friends and confidants than they had 20 years ago.

So, here is my interpretation of all this:

- Rather than having a small number of highly significant relationships, we now have dozens or even hundreds of tiny, fractured, transitory relationships. That's like going from having one full-time job to having a new temporary job every day of the week. Some could argue that it doesn't matter, as long as the little jobs all add up to the big one. The upside is that there's always someone to talk to. The downside is that most of these people may not care about you very much.

- The new structure of relationships threatens to undermine our ability to pursue traditional ones, since every marriage is threatened by Facebook/Twitter/e-mail/Text relationships. If your current relationship is in a holding pattern or having significant problems, there's always someone hanging around waiting for you to be single again.

- It's not all doom and gloom. I personally enjoy my network of Facebook friends, who are great for giving random advice, commenting on my articles or sharing important information. It does us no good to fear change.

- If you get married, don't stalk your partner's Facebook wall or dig through his phone looking for inappropriate messages, it'll only drive you insane. The only question that should be asked is whether you trust this person enough to know that he or she is going to handle temptation appropriately. The truth is that there are some questions to which we may not want to know the answers, and I've personally never wanted to know the details of every conversation being had by my significant other. If you're looking for that one person on earth who doesn't have inappropriate thoughts or gets tempted to cheat, you'll only be duped one time after another.

- Physical, face-to-face relationships are not the same as Facebook friends. One should not be mistaken for the other or replaced by it. Just because you know someone on Facebook doesn't mean you actually know them. Perhaps I'm biased on this one, because I honestly only know 2 percent of my Facebook friends. I don't think I know any of my Twitter followers, but I keep up with what they're doing, it's a bit strange.

We live in a brave new world, one full of possibility and tremendous excitement. I see no reason to fear the future, because we're only going to get more of what we've already gotten. Instead, managing the future might be the best approach, and I truly believe the world is better today than it was 20 years ago.





Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and the author of the new book 'Black American Money.' To have Dr. Boyce;s commentary delivered to your e-mail, please click here.