Hasan LATİF

Aysen Şimşek KANDEMİR

Öznur GÖKKAYA

Engin KARAMAN

Social network sites (SNS) have provided to the lives of romantic partners letting them connect with people, spy on the acquaintances in their social network like never before. This research is based on the disputes of romantic partners about Facebook usage and on the prediction of Facebook jealousy, which manifests itself in the behaviors that restrict/control Facebook usage among partners. The SNS which lead to most dispute with his/her partner is Facebook with 34.4%. In this research, a four-dimensional, 13-item scale, was developed and were subjected to validity and reliability tests. Data collected from 1,304 people were analyzed with the decision tree model, and a prediction on the Facebook jealousy was made. The likelihood of Facebook jealousy at the beginning of the decision tree model was found to be 32.4%. The most influential variable on the "Facebook caused dispute with partner" was found to be the "I know my partner's Facebook password" variable. The fact that the partner's password is known raises the likelihood of Facebook jealousy from 32.4% to 43.2%, and the fact that the partner's password is unknown reduces the likelihood of Facebook jealousy from 32.4% to 24.1%. It has been determined that the most important variables, which indicate the Facebook jealousy disputes and thus lead to restriction/control behaviors, are "I know my partner’s Facebook password" and "My partner and I jointly indicated 'in a relationship' status on our Facebook accounts". Findings show that restrictive and controlling behaviors cause dispute among partners. It is possible to see statistically significant ones from these behaviors in decision tree model.

Keywords: SNS, Facebook jealousy, restrict/control Facebook, Romantic relationships, Scale development, Decision tree.