Social Media Can Be Your Friend Or Enemy When It Comes To Relationships
By Melony Roy
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- If you're about to change your Facebook status from "single" to "in a relationship" or you want to "unfriend" an ex, the creator of a popular Philly dating blog has some advice on how to manage your relationship on social media.
Once upon a time, when you were interested in learning more about a potential love interest, you'd simply just Google them. But in the land of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, there's a plethora of information for you to scroll through. If knowledge is power, how do you use it wisely?
Dating guru and creator of the Philadelphia blog Shmitten Kitten Anna Goldfarb has a few tips.
"If you aren't friends on Facebook, you should definitely talk about it first," she says. "Like when is a good time to become Facebook friends and see what they say."
When is it time to become "Facebook Official?"
"When it gets weird," Goldfarb says. "When people start asking like 'why aren't you guys on Facebook?,' that's when it's a good time, not before."
You're officially "in a relationship"…what now?
"My little rule of thumb for couples is to minimize tagging each other in status updates at all costs," Goldfarb says. "Like don't say best Sunday ever and then tag him because it looks like you're just showing off."
With only 140 characters you can say a lot or nothing at all on Twitter.
"If you need to tweet at each other, do it off hours, do it after say like 8 p.m. when most people aren't on Twitter, because you're going to annoy people if you do it all day," Goldfarb advises. "You also have to be entertaining to the people in your feed. If it's boring like 'did you feed the cat…like yes.' Get out of here, you're not doing twitter right. Also, don't let Twitter replace texting."
If a picture is worth 1,000 words then Instagram should be able to tell you a lot about a person.
"An Instagram "Do" is posting jokey things, like a funny sticker on a bathroom stall," she says, "but not too many selfies as bait for your dude to "like" and getting mad when he doesn't."
Hear more of the interview with Anna Goldfarb in this CBS Philly Podcast:
Anna Goldfarb Interview
The end. When is it time to "unfollow," "defriend" or both?
"Try to avoid looking at your ex's Instagram," Goldfarb says. "It's almost a little worse than their Facebook which is cluttered with other stuff. You're like 'wow, they went fishing, my ex fished. when did that happen?' "Unfollow" them immediately. You don't want access to their life like that. It's super easy to keep them on Facebook and just hide them. People will notice if you "unfriend" them and you will look petty -- unless he did something really terrible."
Do you remember the saying "you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince?"
"Think about your next dude," says Goldfarb. "It'd be easier for you to date in the future if you don't have a book report of your last relationship on your Facebook page, so keep it to a minimum. You never know what's going to happen."
