The debate about social media is nothing new.

Supporters say social networking sites allow us to stay more connected than ever before, no matter how many miles are in between. Detractors say all that connectedness is doing us harm – or, worse, isn't real connection at all.

Regardless of which side you fall on, we can all agree on one thing: social media makes dating even more confusing.

Gone are the days of anxiously waiting for the next chance to see your crush, or slowly revealing parts of your life as you get to know someone. We drive ourselves crazy monitoring every single update on our love interests' social media, and that isn't helping anyone.

For the sake of your sanity, you need to simplify. Avoid these 4 social media mistakes to streamline your love life.

1. Don't cyber stalk. It's hard not to do this, especially when you're online dating. In fact, a small amount of research might be a good thing for online daters – but only enough to confirm that you're talking to a real person who you feel safe meeting, and nothing more. There's no reason to go so far down the social media rabbit hole that you know the name of your date's high school girlfriend. If things go well, you'll find out everything you need or want to know organically.
2. Don't overshare. Social media is meant for communication, but that's no reason to unleash an explosive case of verbal diarrhea on your unsuspecting followers. You don't need to catalogue every up and down of your dating life. If you're happy, resist the urge to gush. If you're unhappy, resist the urge to write bitter missives condemning love. One day you may feel differently, and the old posts will be uncomfortable reminders of the past.
3. Don't follow in the first place. If the first two rules are too hard for you to follow, follow this one instead: no friending or following. When you're in the early stages of dating, social media is a minefield of potential disasters just waiting to explode. The easiest way to avoid the anxiety is not to add each other in the first place. Not that you can't ever do it, but it's best left for a time when the relationship feels more secure. Get to know each other in person, not through a screen.
4. Don't compare. Even if you're not in a relationship, social media rules apply. Research has found that negative emotional consequences arise from comparing yourself to others on social media. It's an incomplete picture – we only show our best and brightest moments online, meaning it's easy to assume our friends have perfect lives when reality could be much different. It's impossible to compare the surface portrayed by a social media profile to your fully three-dimensional life. Don't let it get you down if you're single and it seems like all your friends are ecstatically in love.

The bottom line is, social media is a great tool – as long as you stay aware of the added pressures it brings to the rest of your life.

In Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg’s new book Modern Romance, they discuss the disconnect of online dating in Japanese culture. Despite Japan’s adoption of and love for technology, single people still stigmatize online dating.

The reasons are part cultural and part historical. Japanese singles haven’t had a good experience with online dating, historically speaking. In the 1990’s when online dating first hit the singles scene, online dating companies had male members pay per message and also used their female employees as bait, posting their profiles on the dating sites to attract more male users. More recently, fake dating sites have been exposed, with companies using male employees to pose as girls on the sites and charging their male members to talk to them – (obviously, those members never get to the date).

It’s easy to see why Japanese singles are skeptical. But now dating apps have made things a little easier to verify. First, like most dating apps all over the world, users are verified through their Facebook profile, so it’s not easy to create fake accounts. And Japan is really embracing social media, especially after both LinkedIn and Facebook helped families find each other after the 2011 earthquake.

But another interesting trend is happening with Japanese online daters. The culture is rather conservative when it comes to dating – and guys don’t want to be thought of as players. Since dating apps have become synonymous with hook-ups, Japanese - and men especially - are weary to sign up for fearing like they will come across as insincere. So people aren’t really embracing online dating.

In fact, they aren’t dating much at all. Most Japanese singles are much more focused on work, which means working long hours and delaying starting a family. This is also taking a toll on their social lives. A 2014 survey by the Japan Family Planning Association found that 49% of all respondents had not had sex in the past month, and 18% of men said they had no interest in sex at all. On top of this, they face a serious population decline.  According to Business Insider, a 2012 report by Japan's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research shows the number of Japanese people will fall from 127 million to around 87 million by 2060.

Still not everyone is averse to online dating. The country has seen some interesting trends.

Selfies tend to be popular with online dating in most countries, but are looked upon as narcissistic in Japan. Even a photo showing an online dater by herself is frowned upon because Japanese tend to view this as self-centered. Most daters either post photos with a group of friends (so you can’t really identify the person you are meeting), or they post photos of their cats or random objects. One of the weirdest trends among online daters is posting photos of their rice cookers in their profiles, according to Modern Love.

There are definite cultural and practical barriers to get beyond when it comes to online dating in Japan. But as time goes on and it becomes more trust-worthy and mainstream, hopefully singles will embrace it.

Spark Networks, owner of a handful of niche dating sites like ChristianMingle.com, JDate.com, and BlackSingles.com, has released financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2015.

The company has good news to report, primarily centered around attempts to turnaround business after growth stalled for ChristainMingle and JDate. Highlights include:

• Significant, double-digit improvement in win-back rates with key cohorts
• Double-digit improvement on ChristianMingle TV spend efficiency
• New communication platform driving increased user engagement
• Subscriber base stabilized on both JDate and ChristianMingle in July versus June
• Reiterating commitment to subscriber growth in Q4

Chief Executive Officer Michael Egan stated, "We are pleased to have made considerable progress toward transforming our business during the second quarter, and remain on track to return to sequential subscriber growth across both JDate and ChristianMingle by Q4.”

The expense reduction and improved efficiency program Spark Networks announced in 2014 is showing signs of success so far. Excluding direct marketing expenses, cost and expenses in the second quarter of 2015 were $7.1 million, a decrease of 20% compared to the year ago period. Direct marketing expenses in the second quarter of 2015 were $5.3 million, a decrease of 33% compared to the year ago period and a 12% decrease compared to the prior quarter.

On the downside, revenue in the second quarter of 2015 was $12.3 million, a decrease of 22% compared to the year ago period, and a 9% decrease from the prior quarter. The decreases were primarily driven by a loss in paying subscribers, particularly for the Christian and Jewish Networks segments.

Spark Networks plans to continue its “crawl, walk, run” strategy for the remainder of 2015. A re-design and re-architecture of the company's core websites is in the works. An updated JDate experience is expected in early Q4, followed by an updated ChristianMingle experience in the latter part of that quarter.

Other product improvements are in the works concurrently. An upgraded communication platform has dramatically increased users' interactions, and improved mobile offerings have also seen a positive response.

In addition to improving the product, Spark Networks is working hard to improve its marketing strategy. Changes have been made to the customer acquisition and retention programs with good results. The company has seen in excess of 10% efficiency gains with their ChristianMingle television marketing spend, and July 2015 generated more initial registrations on JDate than any month since the first quarter of 2014.

"It is important to note that this is just the start,” stated Michael Egan. “As we roll out new and refreshed products, and continue to enhance our operational capabilities, we expect to drive continued improvements in customer growth and retention.”

For more on Spark Networks 2 most popular dating services you can read our Christian Mingle review and our JDate review.

MeetMe is a smaller player in the social networking space, but it has undertaken a number of initiatives to boost its customer base. Looking at the company's financial results for the second quarter of 2015, they appear to be paying off.

Highlights of Q2 include:

• Mobile revenue was $8.3 million, up 47% from the second quarter of 2014
• Mobile revenue represented 75% of total revenue, the highest in MeetMe's history
• Total revenue was $11.1 million, up 4% from the second quarter of 2014
• Cash and Cash Equivalents totaled $16.2 million at June 30, 2015
• Net income was $1.2 million compared to a net loss of $1.4 million for the second quarter of 2014

Younger daters are really into dating apps – they helped bring Tinder into the mainstream, and now there are a slew of new dating apps hitting the market, allowing you to do everything from set your Instagram feed to music (Raya) and obtain the dating profile of that girl at the coffee shop you just couldn’t bring yourself to talk to (Happn). While younger daters are active on these apps, as it turns out, the fastest-growing group of online daters is 60 and older.

But do younger and older online daters date differently? University of Texas researchers Eden Davis and Karen Fingerman suspected that their were contrasts between their motivations for online dating, but wanted to determine this through the content of their profiles, so they conducted a study published this month about the differences in profile language and motivation each age group has when it comes to dating.

While we know people using dating websites and apps are typically motivated to find a partner and to date, we know little about the differences of what motivates them to use dating sites, what exactly they are looking for, or how they present themselves to different partners. Gathering 4000 online dating profiles from men and women across the United States, the researchers sampled profiles evenly by gender and from four age groups (18 to 29; 30 to 49; 50 to 64; and 65 or over). The final sample ranged in age from 18 to 95.

First, the researchers studied the most common words used in profiles by all age groups, which included: like, love, music, good, enjoy and fun. But they also discovered different age groups used different words in common when crafting their online dating profiles. For younger daters, these most frequently included the words: go, get, work, school, laugh, movies, much, find, think, try and anything.

Older daters seemed to be more focused on building connection. Their profiles most frequently included words like: man, woman, share, relationship, humor, travel, years, honest, important, well, sense, and family.

Eden said in her report: “Notably, older adults used more positive emotion words such as “sweet,” “kind,” and “nice,” more first person plural pronouns such as “we,” “us,” and “our,” and more words in the ‘friends’ category. These findings suggest that when they present themselves to potential partners, older adults focus on positivity and connectedness to others. Not surprisingly, older adults were also more likely to use health-related words such as “ache,” “doctor,” and “exercise.”

Younger adults tended to enhance their profiles, using mostly first-person singular pronouns like “I” and “me.” They also tended to focus on work and achievement.

The researchers concluded that adults of all ages were looking for love and a partner to enjoy life with, but that younger adults focus more on themselves and their own attributes, while older daters focused on positivity and connection to others.

We're halfway through 2015 and IAC has good news to share. The company's profit in Q2 2015 exceeded expectations, thanks in large part to the overwhelming success of the paid version of its mobile app Tinder.

Match Group, the star of the conglomerate, has driven consistently strong results for the last few quarters, and this one has been particularly momentous. IAC announced its intent to pursue an initial public offering of less than 20% of the common stock of the Match Group. The IPO is expected to be completed during the fourth quarter of 2015.

“The IPO positions The Match Group for continued success with an independent currency, and allows us to focus our attention and capital on growing the rest of IAC’s assets,” said IAC CEO Joey Levin in a statement.

The Match Group also announced plans to purchase PlentyOfFish for $575 million on July 14, 2015. The transaction is expected to close early in the fourth quarter of 2015.

The paid version of Tinder, launched in March, has garnered good responses from users, despite concerns from many that the model would fail.

"Monetization continues to perform at or above our expectations on key metrics like renewal, conversion and resubscription rates,” said Match Group Chairman Greg Blatt. “We’ve seen no discernible negative correlation between monetization and growth."

IAC reported that the number of paid subscribers for its dating services grew 18% to 4.1 million in the second quarter ended June 30. Revenue at Match Group, which accounts for about a third of total revenue, rose 19%.

Outside of IAC's dating businesses, the company has other successes to report. Within Search & Applications, Applications queries increased 8% driven by 20% B2C growth. B2C revenue increased 18% versus prior year. In the Media segment, Vimeo grew paid subscribers 25% to nearly 630,000. In the eCommerce segment, HomeAdvisor revenue grew 26%.

On the downside, Websites revenue decreased 20% due primarily to a decline in revenue at Ask.com and certain legacy businesses. Applications revenue decreased 2% due to lower revenue in B2B. Revenue in Media was down 1% versus last year, despite the strong growth at Vimeo. Operating income for the match Group in the current year period was negatively impacted by a $4.2 million year-over-year increase in amortization of intangibles.

All in all, revenue growth clocked in at 2% for a total of $771.1 million. IAC's net income was $59.3 million, or 68 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $18 million, or 22 cents per share.