Let's face it, social media has changed a lot of things in our life: our dating situations, how we feel about ourselves, and how we choose to portray our life online. One of the main ways social media makes its way into a millennial's life is through dating. With the rise of online dating, it is extremely rare to meet someone in real life; it's not like how it used to be. Sure, you're looking really good in the bar and that guy keeps staring at you, but just expect a text message later; there's no way he'll confront you. And that's the thing: with the rise of social media and online dating, how do we even define dating anymore?
Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter all have an effect on dating for our generation. Liking your ex's pictures on Instagram? Probably not a great thing to do, and now everyone can see what pictures you like -- well done, Instagram. Not feeling appreciated because your significant other doesn't post pictures of you every day on social media? No "Woman Crush Wednesday"s every week? Get over it. Social media has enabled us to see dishonesty more clearly, whether that is in the form of liking pictures of people you probably shouldn't be liking, or DMing someone who always likes your pictures. Either way, social media has acted as a lens that perpetuates insecurity and dishonesty in our relationships.
Social media will have you overthinking things you never even thought bothered you. Did you just get in a fight? Maybe take a scroll through Twitter and see those subtweets, or maybe they favorited a specific someone's tweet. Now that is not only going to make you overthink everything, but it is also going to irritate you. And how do you describe why you're irritated? Because you were creeping and saw that they liked someone's tweet? Well, that's hard to explain and makes it seem like you don't really trust your significant other. And that's precisely the point here: social media convinces us of disloyalty even if there is nothing going on.
Dating in this day is already hard enough. To be honest, what even is dating? Some prefer labels, some don't. Dating is up to interpretation, which is the trickiest part; it means something different to every person. Do you want to be monogamous? Or are we just having fun and it's nothing serious? Literally anything is possible in the realm of dating. Too many things are left up for interpretation. Waiting three hours to text back to make yourself seem hard to get -- why don't we just do what feels right instead of obsessing over what the other person thinks of us? Social media perpetuates this cycle of competition. That one pretty girl who your boyfriend always favorites her tweets? Maybe it's innocent and you don't need to investigate all of the time.
It is hard to be content dating someone in our generation when social media always picks out our flaws and insecurities. Perpetuating these insecurities will only lead to small problems that will eventually become bigger ones later on down the line. Next time you see that your significant other favorited someone's tweet or Snapchats that one person, bring it up in a mature way and realize that social media doesn't run your life, no matter how much influence it may have.
Moral of the story: social media ruins lives. Just kidding -- well, kind of it. Dating should be fun and not complicated, so don't give in to social media and the way it distorts the good times and slowly morphs them into the bad.
