Illustrated by Austin Watts.
Confession time: Have you ever googled a potential partner ahead of a first date? Yep, thought so. Most of us have done it, as recent research in The Guardian claims 41% of 18 to 29-year-olds use social media to investigate a prospective lover. We’re a little surprised that the number isn’t higher.
As The Guardian writer Arawa Mahdawl says, “A little digital due diligence predate is just good sense these days. But, good sense isn't always good manners and there is still something of a stigma attached to admitting you know more about a potential paramour than you really should.” We are all for finding out our date's musical predilections beforehand and would think nothing of dropping that carefully gleaned info into conversation, but we wouldn’t feel so sure about revealing that we also knew what they did last summer. Is that part of the problem? This lack of honesty about how much information we’re holding about a person before they’ve even opened their mouths. Wouldn’t it be easier to come clean about already knowing their basic information, so you can just move forward with getting to know the more meaningful stuff?
Click through to read Mahdawl’s solid suggestions about how to avoid the pitfalls of this new dating etiquette, and let us know if you believe we should 'fess up about how much we know about a date before we’ve even met them. (The Guardian)