Is Flirting On Twitter Or Facebook Considered Cheating?
Are you being social media friendly or flirting when you spend hours on social networking sites?
**Join me Thursday, August 4th at 2pm/ET as I takeover the YourTango Facebook wall. I look forward to answering your questions about dating, love and romance in a Web 2.0 World.**
With over a billion tweets sent on Twitter every week and over 600 million accounts on Facebook, our social lives and behavior have become more digital. We send text messages to ask people out on dates, and late at night when we canât sleep, we get comfortable with our computers and see who else is awake to chat with.
We were on digital overload with the Anthony Weiner twitter sex scandal, the first congressman forced to resign when he broke the boundaries by sending inappropriate photos on Twitter. Sure we got tired of Weinergate, but it makes us ask the question at hand, âIs Flirting on Facebook and Twitter Considered Cheating?â
I asked some of my social media friends and innocent bystanders in real life this question with mixed results in their answers.
Lori Moreno, a Twitter superstar who writes about love said, âYes. Itâs emotional cheating.â Moreno added, âYou need to take that energy and put it into your own relationship.â
Heather Meeker, a social media consultant believes flirting on Twitter and Facebook is tacky and crosses a line thatâs unacceptable. âItâs not physically cheating, but itâs emotional cheating,â said Meeker.
I then asked two men seated at the trendy bar their thoughts on the subject. A university professor told me he didnât think flirting in person once was cheating. The other gentleman said, "As long as there was no physical contact, flirting online wouldnât be classified as cheating."
Meanwhile, our friends at The Frisky conducted a poll of their readers on the subject with the following results
- 48.34% felt that flirting over social media is disrespectful and unfaithful.
- 42.79% believed that a little flirting is understandable, but sending or asking for photos is really wrong.
- 3.6% believe that sending or asking for photos would only bother them if the pictures were explicit or nude.
- 3.28% said they didnât care what their partner was doing online as long as they werenât physically cheating on the sly.
- 1.9% were undecided or had another explanation.
My take on the subject when I talk about the Rules of Netiquette in matters of the heart is you shouldnât do anything online that you wouldnât do offline. Thereâs a difference between being friendly versus flirty, but itâs a very grey area. Social networks are typically 2-dimensional places where youâre entitled and expected to be social media friendly, but setting appropriate boundaries are an absolute must if youâre in a committed relationship or marriage.
Personally, when I was hit on in a Facebook chat by a man whose profile relationship status stated he was âmarried,â it felt creepy to me as well. I called him on it, and then decided to un-friend him.
Weâll be talking about this subject on Thursday, August 4th at 2pm/ET as I takeover the YourTango Facebook wall. I look forward to answering your questions about dating, love and romance in a Web 2.0 World.
Julie Spira is a leading online dating expert and social media strategist. Sheâs the author of the bestseller, The Perils of Cyber-Dating: Confessions of a Hopeful Romantic Looking for Love Online. Follow Julie on Twitter @JulieSpira and like her at facebook.com/cyberdatingexpert