A recent survey revealed that around 40% of couples met online, with social media being one of the most frequent avenues. They have come to play a profound role in relationships. As helpful as they’ve been, there are more arguments against publicizing relationships on social media than in favor of doing so.
Among those arguments are your single friends starting to feel bad, attracting unwanted attention, and giving people who don’t like you opportunities to ruin the relationship. The less people know about your life, the better.
3 reasons to keep your dating life private
- Oversharing on social media increases the risk of stalking, identity theft, and other privacy violations. In 2023, the FTC received 5.7 million fraud reports, of which 1.4 million involved identity theft. The value of the identity theft protection market is projected to be $28 billion by 2029. AI-driven identity theft scams are expected to become more widespread in 2024.
- Keeping your public and private life separate helps establish healthy boundaries for professionals. Globally, 40% of people have an unhealthy work-life balance, and preoccupation with social media further compromises it.
- People who have a secret relationship will not want any information about it surfacing online. You or your partner might be in an official relationship with someone else. One of you might be a minor, or your family or friends don’t like each other.
You are only in the relationship for fun or sex, or it’s in its early stages, and you don’t want anyone to know yet. People will ruin a good thing.
A soft launch on social media is a good way to balance
Soft launches on social media are discrete photos of a meal on a table for two, your hand on someone’s shoulder, or a picture of a mystery partner cropped below the neck. Soft launches also allow you to reintroduce an old fling. Your social media friends won’t know who you’re dating or how long you’ve been together. They’ll just know you’re not single anymore.
In May 2023, a Tinder survey revealed that millennials and Gen-Z users favor soft launching. Eight percent of 18-34-year-olds would hard launch a new significant other on social media, compared to 26% who were willing to soft launch.
How do you decide? It starts with asking the other person if they want to make things public. Few things are worse for a budding relationship than not being on the same page about this. People’s attachment styles influence how they feel about what their significant other shares. If your partner has an avoidant attachment style, they might need more time before you post about them. If they feel comfortable with a soft launch, you must make sure it’s very, very soft.
If your partner is anxiously attached, they might want you to make the relationship clear. While this doesn’t exclude a soft launch, they will want you to make it clear you’re not single anymore. They might prefer a hard launch.
FAQs
How has social media affected dating?
It’s become effortless to monitor someone’s online activities, which can grow into unhealthy scrutiny, eroding the trust that’s key to any relationship’s prospects. More than 25% of people have been caught cheating due to technology. 60% feel their partners might have snooped on their social media, and 70% voluntarily admit they looked through a partner’s phone when they were not in the room.
What do soft launches look like on different social media?
On Instagram, a soft launch might involve uploading a picture of your partner from behind or of you holding hands. In 2017, the platform reported that 34,109 people had met through it since its inception, of which 18,332 had fallen in love.
In text posts on X, soft launching might be a vague insinuation of a new relationship without identifying the person.
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