Social Networks

A recent survey from Harris Interactive of 5,517 UK citizens found that one in 12 (8%) users of social media sites have been the victims of online abuse in some form or another. That part of the story won't surprise anyone who's spent even a marginal amount of time on the Internet. We've seen time and time again that when you put people behind a screen name, the anonymity creates a sense of invincibility and depersonalization that makes it easier to bully others.

The part of the story may be a surprise to some is the response we are taking to online abuse. Only a third (35%) of participants in the study said they reported their abuse to the social media platform on which it took place. Half said they would have reported it, if only they knew how. Another 12% said they chose to respond to the problem by turning the situation around and bullying their abusers.

"It's interesting to note the high percentage of people who say they would have reported the abuse had they known how to, or if the process was simpler," Lee Langford, research director for telecoms, media, technology and entertainment at Harris Interactive, said. "More steps need to be taken by networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and Ask.fm, to increase the effectiveness of reporting tools to prevent trolling."

Another survey, conducted by campaign group Bullies Out, found that 50% of their response pool had been victims of cyber bullies, some of whom were as young as seven years old. The CEO of BeatBullying, Emma-Jane Cross, believes both the problem and the solution lie with the social networking sites themselves. "Social networking sites need to take their users' safety seriously," she said, "which includes making reporting procedures much clearer and ensuring a swift response when abuse is recorded."

The difficulty in reporting abuse on websites is that it isn't just used for reporting abuse. Even the system for reporting abuse is abused. In many cases, a disgruntled user files an unwarranted abuse report simply to get another user in trouble and exact revenge. There is no system in place to distinguish malicious abuse reports from real abuse reports, meaning that many are never taken seriously.

So what can you do? We can't eradicate abuse from the Internet completely, but there are a few steps that can be taken to decrease the likelihood of bullying:

• Only post things you want the public to know. Once something is online, it is no longer under your control.
• Guard your personal information closely, and ask your friends to do the same. Request that they not post personal info, negative comments, check-ins, or any other information that you're not comfortable sharing.
• Don't say or do anything online you wouldn't in person. It may seem easier to express yourself when you are not face-to-face, but don't forget that online communication has real-life consequences.
• Always report inappropriate behavior, harassing messages, and abusive comments to the site administrators. Even a small amount of action is better than no action.

We all love reconnecting with old friends on Facebook - including checking status updates just to see what everyone else is up to. But when you're unhappy with your own life, this could be the worst thing you could do.

Have you ever been frustrated by a string of bad dates, checked Facebook, and suddenly noticed all of your friends are posting pictures with their new boyfriends or changing their status updates to "in a relationship?" While it might seem like everyone is coupled up except for you, it's not reality. But Facebook can make us think so.

How often do you post pictures of yourself when you're feeling down - sitting alone on your couch watching TV? Probably not many.

Well, your friends aren't going to share their lonely nights on Facebook either. They won't share the fact that they weren't invited to that awesome party, or the fights they have with their boyfriends, or the issues that come up soon after they get married. These are the parts of a relationship that people don't want to share. Which is why Facebook isn't an accurate depiction of reality. If you feel depressed after logging on to Facebook, you might want to take some time off.

Social media is a great tool, but it can also be harmful if we take it too seriously. You don't want to sabotage your own love life, yet that's exactly what we do when we obsess over everyone else's Facebook status.

Following are some tips to help you focus on you, instead of everyone else on Facebook:

Don't look at Facebook before a date. It can put you in a bad mood, make you more judgmental of your date, cause you to obsess about your successful Facebook friend, and generally change the whole vibe of what the date could be. If you approach your date with a relaxed and confident attitude, trying to have a good time, you likely will have a good time. If Facebook is getting you down, leave it out. With every new person you meet, you have a new opportunity to connect. So let it happen, without Facebook clouding your view.

Don't share your date stories over Facebook. Your friends might love your crazy dating life and offer their opinions, or maybe their own bad date stories, but do you really need them? There's no need to have a public forum on how your dating life is going. Just focus on yourself, who you're meeting, and having a good time. This isn't a contest.

Don't friend your dates too soon. There's too much temptation to see who he's friended and who he's dated. If you're just getting to know him, keep it limited. You might get the wrong idea from his Facebook page, like he would of yours!

Facebook is a great tool, but it's good to know when to disconnect.

The power of the Internet has certainly changed how we date, especially with the popularity of online dating. Social media has made it really easy to access information about your dates, too. A lot of your dates will be checking out Facebook and Google to learn more about you before you actually meet in person. And chances are, you'll know more about them too.

I encourage people to do some research before the date. A few of my friends were horrified to discover their matches had engagement websites for their upcoming marriage to someone else, yet they were still online dating! Another saw that one of her matches had a police record. You don't want to be caught off guard or misled, so research is important.

Police records aside, how many of you research dates a little more than necessary? Do you really want to know what junior high school he attended, or what he ate for breakfast yesterday morning?

A quick look at Facebook or Twitter can tell you a lot about a person, but dating should be more mysterious. Don't you want the excitement of getting to know your date over time, discovering little quirks and habits for yourself? Or would you rather everything be out in the open, like her background in conservative politics or his experience growing up in a commune?

There's another argument to be made that sometimes we know too much, too soon. When you spend so much time researching someone you haven't met in person, building this idea of who he is in your head, you'll likely be let down in real life when you meet and there's no spark. You might even feel cheated. After all, you thought you really knew him.

But seeing someone's online persona - who he is through social media - can be a bit misleading. A person's social media presence isn't typically who he is in real life. People are much more complex. It's better to think of someone's blog or Twitter page as just a snapshot compared to who they really are as a whole.

It can also be misleading if you're emailing a potential date back and forth several times, becoming more emotionally attached to a virtual relationship. Maybe neither one of you feels compelled to meet in real life, at least anytime soon. But when you do this, you're not getting a complete picture of who your match is. You're falling for an image that you've built up, and one that might not even be real (catfishing).

Instead of getting hung up on your virtual interactions with dates, it's better to meet them in person sooner rather than later, and it's also good to learn about him in real life as you date, not just over Facebook.

Could you fall for someone if you never saw their face?

Yeah, me neither, but the creators of Twine, a new dating app available for iOS and Android, are hoping that daters are ready to move beyond those superficial impulses.

These days, apps like Tinder and Bang with Friends are exploding. Apparently what singles want more than anything is a reason to spend even more time staring at the screens of their smartphones, swiping through photo after photo of potential partners. As convenient as those apps are, you've got to admit they can also feel kind of shallow. And that's where Twine comes in.

In the words of its founder, 35-year-old Rohit Singal, Twine aims to pair users based on a "personality first and looks later" philosophy. Matches are made on the location-based app through interests listed on users' Facebook profiles and - here's the catch - once they connect and start chatting, users can only see blurred-out versions of each other's profile photos.

Think of Twine as Tinder's nicer sibling. Both are used on mobile phones, but Twine eschews the hot-or-not model encouraged by Tinder's rapid-fire photo scrolling. Twine prioritizes quality over quantity, just like a real-life matchmaker, and even limits the number of matches members can receive each day to 3 in an effort to discourage excessive window shopping.

"Every other dating app is trying to show you a photo and pick people who are good looking," Singal says, and that approach has worked because "it expedites behavior in real life-we want to connect with attractive people whether the connection's meaningful or not." Singal, however, is determined to blend the easy access of mobile dating with connections based on a deeper level of compatibility.

But don't freak out - you won't be going into a date completely blind. The app's motto is "Flirt first, reveal later," so rest assured that you will get to see your conversation partners before agreeing to meet in person. When you're matched with someone, based on your Facebook interests and age range, you begin the conversation with a blurred version of their Facebook profile photo. If all goes well, you can choose to reveal your names and photos to each other.

Twine also makes another interesting promise beyond more meaningful matches. The app claims to be the first gender balanced flirting network, to ensure an even ratio of men and women. If the ratio is off at any point, new users are put into a queue and aren't allowed to begin using the app until the ratio is in balance again. New sign-ups can bypass the queue simply by inviting a friend of the opposite gender to join with them.

Twine is certainly taking a risk by taking physical attraction out of the picture, but I, at least, am excited to see where it goes.

Maybe you're not a gamer, but a new study by Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab brings up an interesting conundrum. Researchers found that online avatars (our own virtual representations) could cause us to take on certain personas in the real world. Specifically, sexy avatars are making women objectify themselves in real life.

Researchers immersed 86 participants into a virtual reality world, giving some sexualized avatars (dressed suggestively in short dresses, high heels, and tight shirts) and others conservative, neutral avatars (wearing jeans, jackets, and tennis shoes). When asked about the gaming experience afterwards, the women with sexualized avatars were more likely to talk about their bodies. More than that, if they found themselves physically identifying/ resembling their avatars, they were more likely to believe sexist myths like women are manipulative.

Women with sexualized avatars actually started to see themselves as objects, rather than as human, during the course of the study.

While this study was specific to the relationship between women and avatars in the virtual gaming world, it made me wonder how our online images in general affect our real-life personas, especially in online dating. If you create a profile to project a certain image to potential dates, do you start thinking of yourself in a different way in real life?

Or to take it one step further, think about your social media profiles - Facebook, Twitter, and the like. Do you sometimes post comments or report a specific status to cast yourself in a certain light? For instance, do you post comments about the parties you attend or who you're meeting as opposed to saying "watching television in my pajamas and eating mac and cheese." If you post pictures of yourself in sexy dresses at bars, do you think of yourself differently than if you just post pictures of yourself hiking in your sweats and running shoes?

It's an interesting subject to consider. We are more than what we do in our day to day lives, we are also our online images. Many people we interact with online we don't see that often. Our image of ourselves can be crafted, and in turn make us think that who we are online is really who we are.

So what does this mean for online dating? We all want to present our best selves, so we pick photos that we think make us look sexy or powerful or confident, and we craft profiles to emphasize how we're sexy or confident or successful. This can make a first "real life" meeting nerve-wracking, because you will be compared to your online persona.

One thing is for sure, the virtual world is shaping all of us.

A few years ago, Match.com became a household name when it comes to online dating. Now that mobile apps like Tinder have gained popularity and people are looking to newer and niche online dating sites like JDate or How About We, people are starting to see what else is out there.

In fact, social media, and Facebook in particular, are becoming players in the game. While traditional sites rely on new sign-ups and static searches, social media-friendly dating sites and apps pull information from a vast pool of active Facebook profiles and introduce you to friends of friends in your network. This has become a big draw for people, because most singles feel more comfortable meeting someone new if they have a friend in common. This is especially true for women, who are sometimes skeptical of the safety of online dating.

According to an article in Wall Street Cheat Sheet, entrepreneurs are just beginning to understand the importance of utilizing social media in industries like online dating, which could mean big revenues in the future. LinkedIn has gained traction in the social media space because the platform focuses solely on job seekers and networkers looking for career opportunities. There is a sense of trust when someone comes recommended for a job by a mutual friend or co-worker, so companies are looking to the service to attract new employees. So why not apply the same principal to those looking for a date?