Dating Just Got More Complicated

maggie

A man or a woman asks you out on a date. You have coffee, lunch, or dinner together. You find out more about each other. You fall in love and you live happily ever after, right?
Well, things aren’t quite that simple. According to a recent Glamour magazine article about a survey conducted by Match.com, a popular Internet dating website, people are using “pre-dating” to help them decide whether to give someone a chance or not. “Pre-dating” is the use of the Internet and social media websites to find out information about a potential date.
According to the Match.com survey, about 50% of women research a man on Facebook before a date. Others look at LinkedIn, a social media site for people making professional contacts, Twitter, or blogs. The survey included about 5,500 singles.
Among the things they search for are ex-boyfriends and girlfriends, what they do for a living, playlists, and any other information that would give singles an idea of who they may be dating.
According to the same survey, a surprising 49% of women had cancelled a first date because of something they found out about that person online. That’s actually not too surprising, since another study mentioned in the article found that when we find out one thing we object to about a person, we tend to judge them very harshly, even if we’re compatible in other areas and like and respect that person for other things.  The author of the study points out that disillusionment may take hours if we talk to the person, but can happen instantly when we see that information online.
If you’re single, do you do “pre-dating”? Have you decided to date or not to date someone strictly based on what you’ve found out?
Looking at it more generally, have you ever not associated with or not been friends with someone because of something you found out about them online? Has online information ever affected your decision to hire or work with someone?