What’s the first thing you do after swiping right on a dating app match? For a lot of people, the next step is checking out their social media profile and some singles take it a little further, doing a little Internet detective work into the person. This online sleuthing is known as “creeping” and it’s pretty common, but it also comes with a downside.
According to new research from the cyber safety experts at Norton, all this digging actually reduces the chance of romance. They surveyed 10-thousand people around the world about their habits when it comes to checking out a dating app match online. The results reveal:
- More than half (61%) of online daters admit to Internet vetting their matches and 6% even pay for background checks.
- And the reason that’s bad for romance is that people don’t always like what they see, with 44% saying they’ve unmatched with someone after learning something about them. This includes finding photos of them that don’t match their dating profile (16%) and finding photos they find disturbing (13%).
- And it turns out, even if you’re not on a dating app, people interested in dating you could still be checking you out online. One in five of those polled (20%) say they’ve scrolled through the social media feed of a romantic interest and 7% admit they’ve looked at the music account of a romantic interest.
While it’s totally natural to want to find out more about the person you’re chatting with online, psychologist and dating coach Jo Hemmings says it’s important to find a balance between giving yourself peace of mind that your match is who they say they are and “veering into stalking behaviors.” It’s easier than ever to look into someone’s past online, but she cautions that online daters should be wary of taking that curiosity too far to avoid being influenced or disappointed by what they find.
Source: Yahoo