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"There's a popular suspicion, for example, that Tinder and other dating apps might make people pickier or more reluctant to settle on a single monogamous partner, a theory that the comedian Aziz Ansari spends a lot of time on in his 2015 book, Modern Romance, written with the sociologist Eric Klinenberg. Eli Finkel, however, a professor of psychology at Northwestern and the author of The All-or-Nothing Marriage, rejects that notion. "Very smart people have expressed concern that having such easy access makes us commitment-phobic," he says, "but I'm not actually that worried about it." Research has shown that people who find a partner they're really into quickly become less interested in alternatives. Finkel believes that dating apps haven't changed happy relationships much-but he does think they've lowered the threshold of when to leave an unhappy one. In the past, there was a step in which you'd have to go to the trouble of "getting dolled up and going to a bar," Finkel says, and you'd have to look at yourself and say, "What am I doing right now? I'm going out to meet a guy. I'm going out to meet a girl," even though you were in a relationship already. Now, he says, "you can just tinker around, just for a sort of a goof; swipe a little just 'cause it's fun and playful. And then it's like, oh-[suddenly] you're on a date." The other subtle ways in which people believe dating is different now that Tinder is a thing are, quite frankly, innumerable. Some believe that dating apps' visual-heavy format encourages people to choose their partners more superficially (and with racial or sexual stereotypes in mind); others argue that humans choose their partners with physical attraction in mind even without the help of Tinder. There are equally compelling arguments that dating apps have made dating both more awkward and less awkward by allowing matches to get to know each other remotely before they ever meet face-to-faceâ€

Welcome to the Relationship Era. Say goodbye to positioning, preemption and unique selling position. This is about turning everything you understood about marketing upside down so that you can land right side up. This is about tapping into the Human Element.

"Since November, when Mark Zuckerberg first wrote about his vision for how content should be governed on Facebook, a team within our company has been working to design and implement this idea, with the help of input and feedback from people all around the world. Today, we're announcing more details on the structure of the Oversight Board and its relationship to Facebook in the form of a charter. This central governing document defines the board's mandate and describes its relationship to Facebook. It establishes its membership, governance and decision-making authority, and it sets out parameters for things like the size, scope and power of the board. In the coming months this charter will be available in multiple languages on a new board website."

"In the lead-up to tonight's film, Generation Like, we've been asking our Facebook and Twitter communities to tell us why you use social and how it's affecting your lives. Hundreds of you have told us about the choices you're making - and why you're making them. We've asked a few writers who've thought a lot about social media to read your comments and reflect on them in the context of tonight's film. We also want to hear from you! Share your reactions below in the comments. Does Social Media Empower or Exploit? Douglas Rushkoff, Generation Like correspondent Douglas Rushkoff: Does Social Media Empower or Exploit? Generation Like correspondent Douglas Rushkoff is the author, most recently, of Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now, as well a dozen other books on media, technology and culture. He was correspondent on three previous FRONTLINE films, The Merchants of Cool (2001), The Persuaders (2004), and Digital Nation (2010). Follow him on Twitter @Rushkoff. In the lead-up to Generation Like, FRONTLINE has been asking questions about social media on social media. As I wade through the many responses, I am reminded of my own questions about these platforms when I began making this documentary. Like me, many of you are thrilled by the opportunity for connection and self-expression that social media offer.   Calum James Facebook is the best communication tool ever created. February 12 at 7:02pm   But many of you also share a sense of skepticism about what it is that social media - and the companies behind them - ask from us in return.   We all know this has something to do with our data. We create consumer profiles for the unseen companies on the other side of the screen, and enter into a relationship with them that isn't entirely clear. "Who is doing what for whom, and to what end?" The need to understand this better - and what it means for the young people using this stuff - is what set us on our journey to explor

"n this new, highly anticipated update of her pioneering Killing Us Softly series, the first in more than a decade, Jean Kilbourne takes a fresh look at how advertising traffics in distorted and destructive ideals of femininity. The film marshals a range of new print and television advertisements to lay bare a stunning pattern of damaging gender stereotypes -- images and messages that too often reinforce unrealistic, and unhealthy, perceptions of beauty, perfection, and sexuality. By bringing Kilbourne's groundbreaking analysis up to date, Killing Us Softly 4 stands to challenge a new generation of students to take advertising seriously, and to think critically about popular culture and its relationship to sexism, eating disorders, and gender violence."

"Buying more stuff is associated with depression, anxiety and broken relationships. It is socially destructive and self-destructive"

"That itch to glance at our phone is a natural reaction to apps and websites engineered to get us scrolling as frequently as possible. The attention economy, which showers profits on companies that seize our focus, has kicked off what Harris calls a "race to the bottom of the brain stem." "You could say that it's my responsibility" to exert self-control when it comes to digital usage, he explains, "but that's not acknowledging that there's a thousand people on the other side of the screen whose job is to break down whatever responsibility I can maintain." In short, we've lost control of our relationship with technology because technology has become better at controlling us."

"When Beyoncé's album "Lemonade" was released late Saturday night, it was available only on Tidal, a big win for that subscription streaming service, in which Beyoncé is a part owner. But Tidal's period of exclusivity appears to be quite short - just 24 hours, as the album is expected to be released for sale on iTunes at midnight on Sunday, according to two people briefed on the plans for the release, who, following the usual ironclad rules of secrecy surrounding Beyoncé's projects, were not authorized to discuss them. Apple declined to comment. The brief window of exclusivity for Tidal reflects the growing complexity and fragmentation of the digital music market. For Beyoncé, whose every move is watched intensely by the music business, releasing an album comes with seemingly irreconcilable pressures regarding, on the one hand, managing her business interests and, on the other, reaching as wide an audience as possible. Adele declined to stream her blockbuster album "25" on any service, and Taylor Swift removed all her albums from Spotify before the release of "1989," her latest album, which is available on Apple Music, the company's streaming service. Photo Beyonce with her husband, Jay Z, before the streaming music service Tidal was introduced last year. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times As a partner in Tidal - the service that her husband, Jay Z, bought just over a year ago for $56 million and reintroduced as an artist-friendly alternative to Spotify - Beyoncé faced a strong incentive to release the album exclusively through that outlet, to draw attention to the service and attract subscribers to it. Yet with Tidal claiming just three million subscribers, she would risk alienating the vast majority of the online market if she were to keep the album on that service alone for too long. (Spotify has 30 million paying subscribers, and Apple Music has 11 million.) And the extremely brief window for keeping "Lemonade" -

"From Baton Rouge to Minneapolis to Dallas, it has been a fraught week in the United States. Tonight, University of Massachusetts Amherst Professor Sut Jhally is speaking at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts about race relationships in America. Jhally is the founder and executive director of the Media Education Foundation. He is best known for producing and directing films on politics, violence and social issues. Jhally spoke with WAMC about how he thinks the election of Barack Obama affected racial identity in the United States. The lecture is titled "The Crisis of Whiteness in the Age of the Black Presidency." It is free and open to the public."

The relationship between Wonderful Pistachios and Rovio's Angry Birds entered a new level Thursday with the launch of The Hunt for the Golden Pistachio, the first fully branded Angry Birds game.

"Through this agreement, Facebook will provide Heineken with a global marketing platform that reaches millions of people as well as access to Facebook's deep expertise in building long-term relationships between brands and their audiences," Heineken said in a statement. "The collaboration also provides Heineken with access to Facebook's latest products."

The wide-ranging inquiry into criminal abuses by the British press has led to testimony about relationships and careers damaged by tabloid excess. Newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. are at the heart of the scandal. A former features editor for one of those papers stole the show at Tuesday's hearing.

Below is a look at the top six media conglomerates in the United States: Time WarnerGeneral ElectricComcastNational AmusementsNews CorporationThe Walt Disney CompanyThis is not even close to an exhaustive list and nearly all the large media companies have intertwining relationships with each other. Advertising Age magazine constructed an excellent Media Family Tree (pdf file) which shows how these companies cross-pollinate their profits.

"The dark side of materialism as a tonic is that shopping bags aren't a great replacement for friendships. Loneliness can make us materialistic. Feeling isolated makes us anxious, which makes us less likely to get up the energy to make and maintain connections that would make us feel less alone. So, in the hunt for immediate pleasure, some people turn to shopping. But medicating our loneliness at the mall can make us lonelier, over time, as shoppers begin to learn that it is challenging to form a meaningful relationship with a wristwatch or brag about one's children to a porcelain vase."

"During last Tuesday's presidential debate, Romney answered a question about pay equity by saying that he made sure his chief of staff could leave work in time to cook dinner for her family. "The Bachelor" has resurrected the same regressive view of relationships, showcasing bubbly babes promising to "make the best wife" for ABC's husband-in-chief "because I would be a servant to him. And if he comes home from a long day at the office, I'll just rub his feet and have dinner ready for him!" For more than a decade, reality TV has stuffed "binders full of women" with stock characters:"

"Critics and audiences have also praised its subversive plot, which focuses on the relationship between two sisters and turns Prince Charming into The Villain. But there's another argument to be made against Frozen's villain, and it has to do with the implicit notion that there was something wrong with the Prince Charming fantasy in the first place. The assumption is that it needed correcting because providing girls with idealized images of romance and romantic partners is inherently bad for them."

"According to Kasser, here are three things that happen when you start caring more about stuff than relationships."

"Smartphones have by now been implicated in so many crummy outcomes-car fatalities, sleep disturbances, empathy loss, relationship problems, failure to notice a clown on a unicycle-that it almost seems easier to list the things they don't mess up than the things they do. Our society may be reaching peak criticism of digital devices. Even so, emerging research suggests that a key problem remains underappreciated. It involves kids' development, but it's probably not what you think. More than screen-obsessed young children, we should be concerned about tuned-out parents."

"'Black Mirror' is a satirical anthology series that examines the dark aspects of modern society, particularly as it relates to our relationship with technology. Each standalone episode presents a picture of a world that's futuristic, yet believable; cool, yet horrifying. Each of these study guides will touch on some of the themes the episode explores."

"Another study, from 2018, looked at the impact of smartphones' presence on interactions between strangers. It found that strangers smiled at each other less, and smiled less intensely, when they had their smartphones with them than when they didn't. "People just don't feel that the person is paying attention to them, and then they report having a [worse] conversation," says John Hunter, a PhD candidate in psychological science at the University of California, Irvine, who conducted the smiling study with Kushlev and others. Even if your phone is not in use but still in front of you, "that makes the conversation worse, because the other person kind of feels that, well, that phone in front of you is maybe more important to you than the conversation we're having.""