As someone who grew up and is still growing up in the internet age, I’ve been connected to the web since I was 9 years old.

It wasn’t until I was in junior high school that I fully used it to its full potential. I remember the first time me and my friend discovered chat rooms. We would talk to the weirdest people online, never giving out personal information. Even then we knew that could lead to all types of problems. We also realized how sexual people are on the web. I would just laugh at their crudeness and keep it going.

As I got older I got sucked into all of that social media nonsense. We all thought we were cool with our cute AIM screen names like babyprincessxoxox90 or basketballchamp91.  In high school if you didn’t have a MySpace and your layout was lame you weren’t cool. And your top 8 friends? Boy that was enough to ruin friendships.  There was Friendster, Sconex, Facebook, Livejournal, and Twitter.  Add me on Photobucket so we can share all our photos with each other.  Add me on Last.fm so we can see your taste in music. Watch my videos on Youtube.  Check out my very exclusive LookBook to see my fashionable style. You have a 360 (Xbox 360) what’s your gamertag?  Read my blog!

Basically anything you like, there’s a social media website for it. I love poetry, so the website AllPoetry.Com is perfect for me. I get to socialize with other poets. We have started creating our lives online. So much that it didn’t matter if you weren’t cool in school per se. If you have a million friends on the web, that’s all that matters right?

So of course it only makes sense that relationships would get thrown into the mix eventually. I mean online dating is now one of the most popular ways people meet. I know so many college kids who are using OkCupid, some as a mere joke; others are actually looking for love.

But what about the people who are still meeting the old fashion way? With things like relationships statuses on Facebook, you still have to declare (or not declare) whether you’re dating someone or not.

Social media has changed the way people date, interact, and socialize with one another.

If I want to find out about the interests of a person I’m dating, I can just go to his Facebook page or follow his Tumblr. That cuts out the whole first date and learning about the basics of someone because it’s all on their website. But what about people who lie about who they are on the web just to appear cooler? Sometimes you don’t even know who you’re dealing with.

From personal experience, the best advice I could give is to learn about your significant other outside of social media. Stalking their Twitter or Facebook isn’t healthy to begin with, yet it is also important to note if their online life doesn’t match up with their real life then it’s time to move on. Log off and spend quality time when the person you care about. Face to the face time is so much more valuable than Face Time with your iPhone.