This is going to be the hurtful truth that you probably don't want to hear, but need to hear.

Trying to steer through the world of relationships and love is a compelling task. Trying to navigate it on the Internet can be exhausting. With so many dating sites, comes many questions. What are the chances of finding a mate, is it safe, and can true love exist in cyberspace? There are often guidelines to follow, and rules to live by while dating online. Honesty and good judgement are among them.

Well, I was one of the many people or rather I still am, people who find fullness from social media attention. That notification that says him and her have liked the photo you have recently posted, that Instagram notification, that Facebook or Twitter notification. The excitement one gets when they have reached 100 plus likes. I used to ask my self and judge how other people are so addicted to social media attention until I realised I am just like them. You can be in a room filled with a hundred people and still feel like you are in your own personal space alone, why? Because the neck is bent down looking at a gadget. Everyone does that. I would like to believe that most of us seek social media attention because something lacks in our reality. There is something we all need or want but in our reality “that something” is not there. We run from our problems by spending countless hours looking at a gadget, well, more specifically being on social media counting the likes we got today and counting the followers we got and even setting a target to reach a certain amount of followers simply because this makes us feel better about ourselves and maybe because it makes us feels better about our lives, isn’t?

One of the first things I reach for the moment after I opened my eyes is my phone. I launch my apps accordingly: Facebook and Instagram. In auto modus, I scroll mindlessly through each respective feed searching for something eye-catching and something for me to 'like.' This has become a ritual that I do every morning, and unable to shake. I am feeding my mind subconsciously with irrelevant and unimportant and sometimes, soul-destroying content. Does this seem a bit too dramatic? Well, studies (Vogel et al, 2014; Lee, 2014; Vries and Kühne, 2015) reveal that there is a high correlation between self-esteem and Facebook 'lurking.' We are thought to have the need to compare ourselves with others, in order for us to fulfill our sense of connection, self-worth and social status. This could be a healthy mean of measurement for development, for example: seeing your classmate bragging on Facebook about finally finishing the paper that you have been avoiding. Seeing that post may push you to get your butt in gear and finish that paper. On the other hand, it may have a detrimental effect of measurement, seeing your feed with a multitude of announcements of the latest travel adventures, new jobs, photos of nights out, and my personal favourite: it is the weekend (working in the customer service industry, I am painfully acquainted with there is no such thing as a weekend). May result in you feeling inadequate and a sense of failure.

As I quietly observe the ordinary couple walking hand-in-hand in the shopping mall, occupying their other available hand with their iPhones, I began to wonder as to whether or not physical intimacy was being dangerously replaced by online intimacy? Have we completely lost the importance of genuine face-to-face interaction? Or has our online couple status increased our relationship longevity?

Funny, isn't it? How social networking was invented in order for us to reach out and connect with our loved ones. Formed in hope of us reaching out and pulling back new acquaintances and opportunities.

Can you remember before computers were in everyone's house? Most kids nowadays are growing up in a time where technology is all around them. As you can imagine, technology has changed everything. Now we have tons of information available at the touch of a finger tip. Unfortunately, with the good news comes the bad news. This sudden boom of technology has allowed for not only the spread of great ideas, but it has also aided in spreading messages of hate and violence. In this new world it seems hard to avoid the pressure. We turn on the news and see the good news but we also see the bad. Kids now can look to a screen and see the world they inherit. They will see the headlines we make and they will have to fix the problems we make.

Politics is now a dirty word.

Since turning 22 I have decided to finally become a member of a culture I have admired since I was little, and would trace the tattoo my dad had on his arm. I got my first tattoo on a extremely warm summer day, one hour after I made the decision to get one. Now that goes against anything I ever planned on doing that day, but I did it.

I have a lot of dead Facebook friends. It seems like a shocking sentence, but you probably do as well, even if you’re fairly young. I have at least six on my small friends list of 300 or so. These people have passed on, moved into another realm—but they’re still hanging around their social media accounts, and mine. I've deleted some in the past but I'm not quite sure what the dead social media friends etiquette is. Do you? I don’t know if I should have done that. I’m assuming that when someone in my close family or circle dies, it will be like a punch in the gut to see them on social media. It seems that this is another the world and our old ways cannot keep up with the age of the internet. This, to me, is clearly one of those situations. Maybe it's the new normal. It will take time for me to adjust to this part of the internet.

Online dating is very popular nowadays and majority of my friends have met their significant other through some dating site. Me on the other hand I get nothing but crazy, hot ass horny mothafuckers looking for one thing and one thing only... SEX! How in heck do I only attract guys who want to just hook up and never actually take me on a damn date?!

Lets take a trip back to the 1940s. A lot of ideas were being thrown around, and theories of psychology were in full bloom. In the wake of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud's death, as well as the rise of John B. Watson and behaviorism, a new theory was making its break on history. Carl Rodgers and Abraham Maslow introduced a new theory know today as the humanistic perceptive. This is the belief that all humans are unique and should be treated as such. Additionally, it emphasized self-worth and primarily viewed actions as a result of personal-gain. Basically, if something brings you personal pleasure you will continue to do it as well as if something makes you feel bad, you will not continue to do it.