If anyone is trying to find love it is easy to turn to social media sites when finding someone in person does not work out in your favor. Social Media can be a great way to find people when used the right way, but if it is used in a wrong way to deceive another person it can be very dangerous and lead to death. This article will describe some safety procedures to keep the social media sites safe and some scary stories involving Tinder.

Parents may tell you to never go on social media because it is filled with predators that can deceive young teens who believe the best in people, are vulnerable, and oblivious to the dangers of the world. This is an extreme approach to something that can be potentially bad for the students. However, social media was created to connect people safely to each other and create new friendships or relationships. It can remain this way through safety tips, instead of teenagers completely disregarding social media altogether.

For starters, if you are on a site, such as Instagram then you can make your profile private, therefore you can regulate who can follow you or not. On sites, such as Tinder there are no private settings, therefore everything is public. The fact that anyone can look at your pictures and a short description of you including your age and where you live or where you go to school, you have to be very careful. For example, you can be honest about your name and age, but as far as your location it is best to leave that blank, until you meet the person and trust them. If some stranger has your location and what college or school you go to then they could track you down and follow you. They could be in a car and see you at school and follow you to your home, a more private setting, where they can take advantage of you or do other terrible things. You may not even know the person who is following you or know that they are following you which is the scariest part. All it takes if for your location to be public and then anyone can use it and locate you.

Meeting a person is the time that can be the best because that is officially when the relationship can take off, but it can also be very bad because it is the most dangerous part of Tinder. If you decide to meet with a person from Tinder it is imperative that you meet in a public location, such as a coffee shop, therefore there will be witnesses. If the first date goes well I would still strongly suggest remaining in public places the whole time, rather then going into his or her’s car or apartment. Even if the person says to get into the vehicle to get to another public location, it is still not a good idea. They could be luring you into their vehicle with the promise of going to another public location, but lie. Remember you can not fully trust this person on the first date and who is to say that this person lies or not.

As you begin to know more about the person and go on several dates, and if you feel comfortable then it is a good idea to go back to his or her’s place and go to more private settings. It is all about if you trust the person, but trust can only happen over time if the person says that they are trustworthy on the first date.

Some scary Tinder stories that are out there involve kidnapping. For instance, there was this one teenage girl who had met this guy on tinder. They were the “perfect match” and were talking for over a month. Because she was desperate for love and he was cute and they had been talking for over a month then she decided to go over to his apartment. When she entered his apartment he immediately grabbed her, tied her down, and assaulted her until morning. When she finally got away she went to the police and told them his name and the location of his apartment. When the police went to the apartment it was completely cleared and the name he gave the girl was a fake alias. There was no way of tracking this guy down because she put her faith in someone over a dating site. If she had met this guy over a public dates multiple times then it would of been more safe to go back to his place, but she counted talking to him over text for a month as quality time and a good reason to then go over to his place. In terms of safety reason, quality time that validates going to his place should only be somewhere private. Texting does not count because there is no face to face contact and the person could lie more easily over text, rather than in person.

Overall, dating sites are not a terrible idea, but a person must go about it in a safe manner or else it could end in a terrible tinder trauma.