Online dating? Here’s how you can snoop on a potential date’s socials…but protect yourself from being snooped on
Meeting someone the old fashioned way seems to be more foreign than ever. In today’s society, it’s becoming more common to meet your significant other through an online dating app rather than in person. Whether you’re connecting on Tinder, Hinge, or Bumble, having access to their name and photo can help you learn a lot more about them than they might tell you.
Some potential dates might want to stay mysterious until you meet up on the first date, others might be an open book, willing to share their entire life story with you. Either way, first dates can be very nerve racking, no matter how little or how much they’ve shared doing a little extra online snooping never hurt anyone… right?
To help you with your detective work, we’ve put together some tips to learn a little bit more about your date before meeting them.
Check their social media
With between 70-80% of American’s using social media today, this is the obvious place to start to give you some insights into your date. With any luck they will have a public profile so you can learn as much as possible!
Once you’re in you could get a head start on finding out what common interests you might already have to help that awkward first conversation along. Can’t find a common interest? With any luck they’ve posted about their favorite book that you can be casually reading when they arrive? Maybe you have some mutual friends that you can help to verify them?
Or maybe it’s not all common interests and book recommendations. When you’re looking through their posts, you might end up finding some red flags that might put you off or you might even catch them in a lie about what they do or who they are.
Using social media helps you to verify who they are and that they’re (hopefully) not catfishing you so you can confidently head into that first date.
Google them
Google knows all. So why not turn to it when you want to learn more about a person you’re going on a date with? If you know their full name, you can punch that in, but if you don’t, finding them on a social media platform will most likely reveal that to you.
Once you Google them, you might be surprised to see what actually pops up, it might be articles that they’ve been mentioned in, their personal website, a digital portfolio, or even a mug shot, but you’ll never know until you try.
Find them on pages that they claim to be affiliated to
If you’re talking to someone and they claim they don’t have social media, that’s usually a bit of a red flag in of itself. In today’s society, almost everyone has some sort of social media presence. Whether they’re on it and checking it every day or just using it to keep in touch with those few key people in their lives, it’s unlikely they aren’t lurking online somewhere.
Regardless, if they say they don’t have social media, try looking for companies, groups, or pages that they claim that they’re affiliated with. This will give you peace of mind that this person is actually real and not lying to you.
Remember, it’s a two-way street
Keep in mind that if you can snoop your online date before you meet up with them, they’re probably able to do the same. It’s very rare to find someone who is willing to go in blind without doing some light online searching before meeting up in person.
So, what does that mean for you? Well, you can try to google yourself and see what pops up. Is there an old embarrassing article about you? Or does a major achievement of your life show up? First impressions are everything and a lot of the time these days first impressions are made online.
Does your social media presence showcase the best parts of you or does it show a small glimpse of who you are? Have you posted some inappropriate things in the past that shouldn’t be online anymore? Rather than trawling through years of online history to find that potentially embarrassing post from high school, why not start with a social media scrubber like LifeBrand? We can help you flag any inappropriate or potentially harmful posts so that you can clean up your social media profiles before your date finds them!
It’s a quick and easy way to put your first foot forward. Don’t let something you said or did in the past affect your future.
Now, what are you waiting for? Start your scrub now, then get back to swiping!