According to Ask Jeeves (that search engine we’ll forever associate with a stuffy butler), up to half of online users have logged on in the name of love .

Whether it’s spying on a long-lost ex, looking up a prospective partner or attempting to locate a childhood sweetheart of old, more and more surfers are using the internet to give their love lives a proactive kick up the rear. This isn’t so surprising when you consider just how wide and knowing the web is. Such phrases such as: ‘He’s bound to be on Facebook,’ ‘Looking won’t do any harm’ and ‘I’m just checking for peace of mind’ pepper far too many late night conversations in the pub.

Profiles on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Myspace have become our online imprints, straining under the weight of our holiday photos, shaky video footage and declarations of loves, hates and interests. We tell complete strangers whether we’re single, coupled or engaged; where we’re working, who we’re friends with and how we’re feeling. With all this content at our fingertips, it’s hardly a shock to discover that some of us have taken advantage and become the most efficient of online detectives.

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Newsflash: social networks tamper with your moral compass! Well, that’s according to some professors hailing from Ohio and California, who presumably spend their days casting mutinous looks at the nearest PC while muttering about the purity of technology-free childhoods.

Aryn Karpinski of Ohio State University has put the boot into Facebook and Twitter by describing regular visitors as underachieving and un-ambitious layabouts. Charming. According to Karpinski, young people online who favour a little poking and a little tagging end up with lower school marks, and go on to work in lower paid employment. Or not work at all.

“There may be other factors involved, such as personality traits, that link Facebook use and lower grades,” says Karpinski, who – surprisingly – doesn’t have a Facebook account. “But perhaps the lower Grade Point Averages could actually be because students are spending too much time socializing online.”

And California does seem to support Karpinski’s claim. Neuroscientists at the University of Southern California have entertainingly dubbed Twitter a “rapid-fire media” that has the power to “confuse your moral compass.”

According to the USC, social media websites interfere with how we regard – and participate in – relationships, effectively stripping away the usual high levels of emotional attention we would provide and expect in return when communicating.

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