How Social Media Has Changed Dating
By Chris Hammond
Once upon a time, a guy would physically see a girl from a
distance and become attracted to her and then approach her about going out on a
date with him. The first date most
likely occurred without too much prior contact, sometimes with only one brief
phone call (this is an actual phone call not a text or email) to discuss the
schematics of the date. But the first
date was filled with much anticipation, as neither one really knew the other
person and it was a toss of the dice to see if the initial attraction turned
into a spark or fizzled out.
Now, things are different.
A girl sees a FB profile of a guy on-line and checks him out on his page
and on LinkedIn before messaging him.
They begin to chat on-line, then text, then email and finally work up to
a phone conversation long before the first date. After a period of time, they agree to meet
but have already learned so much about the other person that the date becomes
the last part of the getting-to-know-you phase and not the first part. This is precisely why social media has
changed the way we date.
Attraction phase. It is much easier to become attracted to a
person on social media websites now because so many people use professionally
touched-up photos or at the very least, the best photos they can find. While a picture can say a lot about a person,
it by no means says everything because you are the one interpreting the photo
though your own perspective. Basically,
you can make a photo say whatever you want it to say just like you can
interpret too much about a person based on one photo. Don’t allow a photo to determine your level
of attraction as you might be more or less attracted to the person when you finally
meet them in person.
First-contact phase. There are no real rules when it comes to who
should initial the first-contact however, you should not be connecting with a
person more frequently than they are connecting with you. For instance, if you begin chatting with
someone and they don’t respond right away, don’t be too quick to respond
either. If you do, you look
desperate. Rather respond an equal
number of times to demonstrate that you are neither too eager nor too
unavailable. All forms of contact are
appropriate but most begin with chatting, then texting, then email and finally
phone calls. This is a gradual process
not a sprint.
Dating phase. By the time you go on your first date, you
should know quite a bit about the person you are expecting to meet in
person. By this time you already know
that you like the other person and they like you, what you don’t know is if
that spark on the phone will translate into a spark in person. You also don’t know if the picture you have
been seeing is real or imagined. It is
much easier to pretend to be something that you are not or something more than
you really are when the person is not right in front of you. It is much harder to do this in person, not
impossible, just harder.
Social media has changed dating. The “once upon a time” story will not return
and “talking” has replaced “dating” as the new buzz word indicating an
exploration of a mutual interest. By the
time a person is “dating” now, a relationship is already implied and
exclusivity is expected. Things are
quite different from twenty years ago.