[Answer] Should Lovers and Married Couples Look Through Each Other’s Phones?

[Answer] Should Lovers and Married Couples Look Through Each Other’s Phones?

Life requires a sense of boundaries. In the Western world, privacy and personal boundaries may be concepts that receive relatively strong emphasis, but in our traditional culture this dimension has often been lacking. Parents, spouses, children, and even siblings, while living together as family, are still independent individuals, and the part of them that belongs to the individual should be respected. Many conflicts in life are closely tied to the absence of boundaries. Our social structure is no longer built on old hierarchical norms such as ruler and subject, father and son, or the obedient wife following the husband, yet moral expectations and family ethics have not been adjusted and improved in time. Parents’ interference in their children’s lives has become a major source of many family tragedies, while the lack of basic trust and respect between spouses has produced another share of them. So in essence, snooping through a phone may be the fuse that ignites many tragedies, but it is also the inevitable result of missing and disordered family ethics.

Returning to the question of whether partners should look through each other’s phones: to a certain extent, the level of information and privacy contained in a phone should be regarded as equivalent to that of a diary, as part of the individual that deserves respect. Although a phone may contain more information in sheer quantity, in terms of value and the degree to which it reveals a person’s inner world, it may fall far short of the latter. One reason is that nowadays most people no longer examine their inner selves very deeply. The information age has brought convenience, but it has also made information more superficial. The urge to pry into privacy is an inborn human tendency, and it is precisely this tendency that leads people to open Pandora’s boxes whose consequences never end well. Hidden complaints, ambiguous exchanges, jealousy, and well-intentioned lies may seem like signs of an impending storm, but more often they are nothing more than a flash of lightning that will soon disappear. Yet once such things are exposed, all possibilities for handling them in a constructive way are removed. And if the situation is already certain, beyond doubt, and beyond repair, then whether one looks through another’s private information may no longer matter that much.

There may be only one truth, but inner feelings, mutual understanding, care, and even the warmth of enduring companionship make it possible for every problem to have more than one solution. Sometimes what we should think more carefully about is the future direction of life and our hopes for it. As for how to weigh those things against the truth, each person may carry a different balance in their heart. But no matter what calculation or judgment we make, to invade someone’s privacy roughly in order to obtain information—while stripping away care, understanding, discussion, and even the chance for the person involved to explain themselves—can hardly be called wise, nor can it lead to the best possible outcome.

Therefore, unless there is a legal necessity, basic respect for privacy is something the whole society should continue to learn and practice. Only in this way can society truly move in the direction of civilization.