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LONDON — I'm sitting in a packed theatre on the opening night of a sellout production. It's a night I've been looking forward to for months, but right now I'm more interested in my phone.

While everyone around me chatters excitedly before the play starts, I'm silently staring at Instagram, but it's not what you think.

I tap the word "following" at the top of my notifications tab and I'm taken to a page that tells me what my friends have liked. And, more specifically, what my ex-boyfriend has liked. 

My heart's in my mouth as my eyes flit about the screen, trying to take everything in. Just a few words on a screen have confirmed what I've been dreading: that my ex has moved on.

Seconds later, the curtain rises, the lights dim and the play begins; but my thoughts are elsewhere. 

For the next three and a half hours, I'm oblivious to the scene in front of me. My mind is playing out the story of my ex and his new girlfriend as I blink back tears.

Instagram's notifications section is usually a pretty innocuous feature. When set to "you," it tells you who's liked your photos, who's commented and who's followed you. 

If you flip to the "following" tab, you can find out what the people you're following have liked. 

Most of the time, this feature is pretty uneventful. It will mostly tell you which of your cousins has liked a dozen cat photos, or which of your friends is most obsessed with avocados. 

But, this feature that can also offer some revealing insights into what your lover, your ex-lover or your love interest is getting up to.

In the throes of a painful breakup, I decided to check the "following" section of Instagram to see if I could gain any kind of insight into what my ex was getting up to. I — like so many other people during breakups — wanted to know if he was as sad as I was; if he was carrying on regardless; or if he had moved on completely. 

I checked periodically at first, and then the urge became greater. I kept seeing the same name appearing over and over next to his. A name I'd never heard him mention before when talking about friends or family. 

The more often her name appeared in the "following" section, the more frequent my visits to that feed became. 

Each time I saw her name, the blood would rush to my face, my heart rate would quicken, and a feeling of sickening jealousy came over me. I hated what I saw, but I told myself I needed to see it. 

That final visit to the feed as I sat in the crowded theatre told me that my ex had commented on the girl in question's selfie with a kissing emoji. A further few clicks showed me more comments, more likes, and more emoji that had been passed between the two.

Although I believed this information would help me, research suggests that it could have made my breakup worse than it needed to be. 

Researchers labelled this type of behaviour “interpersonal electronic surveillance,” a.k.a. social media stalking. 

I had before me what looked like the beginnings of a budding relationship. 

In a recent study published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, researchers labelled this type of behaviour “interpersonal electronic surveillance,” a.k.a. social media stalking. Researchers explored the impact of "online surveillance after relationship termination" and found that seeing exes flirting over social media actually makes it harder for people to get over their relationships. 

Dating and relationship expert James Preece says that repeatedly checking your Instagram following tab isn't just a breakup thing; people in healthy relationships do it too. 

"The problem with this is that it can really feed paranoia. Even if you are in a great relationship, if you like the wrong type of Instagram post then it can raise alarm bells. [Your partner] will wonder what you are up to and what your motivations might be," Preece told Mashable. 

Preece says that if your partner keeps liking certain people's posts, then you shouldn't be afraid to question their actions. But — he says — there could be a completely innocent explanation behind it. 

"If you are experiencing a breakup then it's even harder. You'll watch every single like and get more and more jealous. The best thing to do during a breakup is to take a break from social media," Preece continued. 

Student Kylie Hill from North Carolina thinks that incessant checking of Instagram's "following" notifications can be harmful for relationships, but it also helped her discover a boyfriend's cheating.

"I used to check it all the time just to see what my boyfriend was doing," Hill told Mashable. 

"One time I was dating someone and I found out he had another girlfriend just by the pictures the was liking [on Instagram] so I went on the girl's page and saw that they had been dating for a while," Hill continued. 

She's not the only person to have unearthed a partner's secret through this feature.

Ishita Ranjan — a marketing manager from London — found out that her boyfriend was in a relationship with someone else by checking the following tab. 

"It made me feel sick to my stomach."

"He told me he'd been to a wildlife park with a friend. Then I noticed on Instagram's following page that a friend had liked a photo of a girl at the same wildlife park," Ranjan told Mashable.

When Ranjan clicked on her profile, she saw that the two had been to the wildlife park together. It took a further 30 seconds to realise that they were in fact in a relationship. 

"It made me feel sick to my stomach," Ranjan continued.

Instagram became Ranjan's source for finding out what her boyfriend wasn't telling her. 

"I trusted Instagram more than him," she continued. 

Whether you're in the middle of a breakup, or you're worried about what your partner is getting up to, Instagram notifications can offer an insight that might be otherwise unavailable to you. 

"I trusted Instagram more than him."

In my experience, the "following" tab made my breakup even more painful than it needed to be, but it also told me what I needed to know: That I too should be moving on. The moment I got confirmation of his moving on, I knew that things between us were 100% over, and I was free to continue with my life.

Nonetheless, it's an experience I don't wish to repeat, and since that breakup I've refrained from looking at that section of the app. Yes, this app could confirm a partner's cheating, but it's important to remember that Instagram 'likes' are often be totally meaningless.

In short, use this feature sparingly: It can be a deal-breaker or a disaster. 

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Note: The following descriptions may be considered NSFW.

This morning at my breakfast table I learned how to pleasure another woman with my boyfriend.

Sex education site OMGYes is starting conversations about female pleasure, via some experimental new methods.

In a recent chat with currently controversial feminist icon Gloria Steinem, actress and women’s rights activist Emma Watson endorsed OMGYes, encouraging fans to “definitely check it out...It’s worth it” (“it” being the site’s $29 subscription fee).

The interactive site, backed by several research studies about the pleasure preferences of over 1,000 women, features video interviews with real women talking about their real experiences of sexual pleasure. Most notably, touchscreen video lessons of sexual stimulation techniques allow users to tap and caress a variety of virtual vulvas on-screen.

What is sexual pleasure? And how does it happen?

But what is a site like OMGYes actually teaching us about female sexual pleasure? Most notably, when we’re invited to learn about sexual pleasure via a futuristic touchscreen, are we framing sexual pleasure as something to talk about or just another thing to type about from the isolating safety of our handheld devices? Though Emma Watson got gutsy to publicly praise OMGYes as a concept, her language was still vague, peppered in the age-old euphemism for sex — “it” — and still left female sexual pleasure in the background of the site itself. Are we really ready to use OMGYes as its creators intended or is this just another piece of a human sexuality, untranslated from the web to real life?

How it's packaged

OMGYes certainly makes strides in breaking the silence, by packaging female sexual pleasure in new, educational ways. But its one-sided sexual stimulation experience (created by viewing and virtually touching these women through a screen) runs the risk of continuing to promote female sexual pleasure as something to be achieved rather than cooperated, intuited rather than asked about, and perfected rather than made genuine. This could reinforce the disconnect between pleasure and communication that mainstream porn has already vastly propagated.

At times this is even presented in similar packaging to porn: The women featured on the site conform to many classic beauty standards, and their pre-recorded moans of pleasure are soft, dainty and (notably) never audibly climactic, an intentional decision on the creator’s part. OMGYes co-creator Lydia Daniller says, “We’re actually working to counteract the orgasm as goal-oriented view of sex through the entire site, and through the simulations in particular. We wanted to emphasize pleasure for pleasure's own sake and not pleasure to reach an ‘end goal.’”

"Hey! We won! This is like a video game.”

Nonetheless, when my boyfriend and I took OMGYes for a spin on his iPad one morning, we couldn’t help but direct our eyes to the prize. We chose to learn about one woman on the site who was teaching us the technique “layering,” via video. We listened to how exactly she likes to experience this kind of touch and why. She cautioned us against moving too quickly or venturing away from her clitoris too far or for too long, which rang realistic. After watching her video and reading the site’s blurb about “layering” we ventured to the virtual vulva, taking turns to practice the moves we were just taught.

The virtual video was good at responding quickly and accurately when we disobeyed our new sex partner’s instruction. After a few minutes, in place of her climax, the video just ended. That’s when my boyfriend exclaimed, "Hey! We won! This is like a video game.”

Christina Vasiliou, OMGYes Experience Designer and Co-Director who created the touchscreen functions of the site, says this goes against the hopes of OMGYes. “We took many measures to avoid any kind of similarity or connection to video games. The only feedback the user receives is verbal feedback from the participant — there is no score.”

In our current digital age, it’s only natural that OMGYes’s touchable virtual reality videos are the crowning jewel of the site and that its 45,000+ users (split 50/50 men-to-women) are drawn to it. But the virtual reality may be distracting from the site’s mission — communication about sexual pleasure in real life — in ways similar to mainstream porn.

What's porn got to do with it?

When I’m not writing about sex or testing products and services, I’m teaching workshops about sex to teens (covering topics like consent and healthy communication) and adults (on topics like sexual pleasure and sex toys). In every workshop one of the first things we do is talk about porn.

First, I ask the group, “What did you learn in sex ed class?” Responses range from “Nothing” to “I guess gay people don’t have sex then, huh?” but always include “pregnancy” and “STIs” on the short list of not-so-useful information gleaned from our nation’s often medically inaccurate, abstinence-based and rarely gender-and-sexuality-inclusive sex education programming.

Then I ask a series of questions about porn: “Who is having sex in the porn most widely available to us?”; “What kind of sex are they having?”; and then, most importantly, “Who’s doing the talking and what are they saying?”

Women in porn are rarely ever saying words.

Because their critical minds are sharp and fresh to the happenings in this world, teens are usually the quickest to conclude that women in porn are rarely ever saying words (let alone complete sentences) and, most impactfully, they’re almost never speaking directly about their own sexual pleasure when they do.

It’s hardly new information that women are done many disservices by mainstream pornography (and the writer would like to note that not all porn is created equal and some is even created feminist). However, it is new(er) information that young people are definitely watching porn especially with the ease-of-access via their smartphones.

What I’ve found from doing these brainstorms in my workshops is that while adults may be watching porn for sexual excitement, experimentation and enhancement, young people, caught in the beginning stages of their introduction to the confusing world of sex, are likely seeking porn because it offers a version of sex education to fill the void left by what their schools offer. Two examples: What is sexual pleasure? And how does it happen?

When we learn about sexual pleasure via mainstream pornography, we’re taught that sexual pleasure is wordless-yet-seamless, limited to heterosexuality, penetration and scenes like pizza deliveries, locker rooms and high rise offices. But rarely are we taught the specifics of genital touch — what it looks like, what it feels like and how to do it.

OMGYes aims to fill the need for this kind of education. The site boasts an impressive team of designers, creators and sexual advisors such as Annie Sprinkle and Carol Queen, the latter of whom suggested to the site’s creators that the site initially focus on the specifics of female genital touch: “It’s completely missing from sex education. Porn distorts it terribly. And taboo and embarrassment surround the issue. Consequently, people think women are all roughly the same in their sexual reactions — women aren’t explaining what they like, and their partners aren’t asking.”

So, OMGYes co-creators Rob Perkins and Lydia Daniller set out to fill in the pleasure education gaps by directly responding to what women said they want and need for greater sexual pleasure: communication.

"What makes for ‘good sex’ varies from person to person,” says Daniller. But when they asked a representative sample of 1,055 American women ages 18 to 95 to tell them what makes for a good sex partner, the three most common characteristics were:

1. He/she takes the time to find out what I like. (91% of women)

2. He/she is attentive to me — listening and being aware of whether I’m enjoying sex. (89% of women)

3. He/she asks me what feels best for me. (81% of women)

“[Our] research showed that a major barrier in accomplishing great sex was the lack of specific enough language and a comfortable way to describe what one likes or wants,” says Daniller.

OMGYes, Carol Queen and even I agree: Communication is the key to genuine, real-life, non-pornofied sexual pleasure education.

Let's just agree to be awkward

But are we learning what OMGYes wants to teach us?

Upon reviewing the site for Refinery29, Sara Coughlin wrote, "The female orgasm has garnered a reputation for being so complex that many women have taken it upon themselves to draft specific instructions for partners. But a new online training program, OMGYes, aims to lessen that educational burden by teaching people how to make any woman climax.” Bobby Box for AskMen.com observed, "The website understands that videos needn’t be too long, nor should the copy."

The vast majority of women require over 20 minutes of continuous and consistent clitoral stimulation in order to climax. OMGYes’s very own research unsurprisingly unearthed huge amounts of variety in the particularities of how women desire and respond to erotic touch person-to-person. Female orgasm is complex and unique and yes, Bobby Box, takes a little longer than some brief copy might convey.

All sexual partnerships should include the safety, space and expectation of specific instruction and a lengthy learning curve when it comes to pleasuring each other. Neither should be cast as a time-consuming “educational burden” but rather a chance to connect via verbalizing our unique erotic make-ups.

One of my favorite sex educators Al Vernacchio says of sex: “The most freeing thing we can do is allow ourselves to be awkward. And no one in porn is ever awkward.” Rarely does the suave guy we see in porns fall off the bed, get a leg cramp or ask his co-performer, “Remind me exactly where your clitoris is again, babe?” All of these negotiations happens off-screen and mistakes are edited to present picture-perfect-penetration and opulent orgasms. In order to finally allow ourselves to bring conversations about real female sexual pleasure out of the perfect porn world and into the messy reality of our bedrooms, orgasms and relationships, we must first embrace the value of awkward sex.

When we make mistakes, we build trust. When we laugh at ourselves, we build connection. When we ask for direction, we build consent. When we state our desires, we create pleasure. And when we can unplug from our devices and experience all of this for real with our partners, we create intimacy.

OMGYes is undoubtedly making strides. It will take work to lift the shroud of mystery, shame and deprioritization that has cloaked female pleasure for a long, long, long time. But we also can and should go further.

What questions can I ask my partner to learn about her unique sexual pleasure? What should I do if these techniques don’t pan out in the sack? How can I instruct my partner to do what pleasures me without hurting his/her ego?

Because tapping and rubbing one of OMGYes’s virtual reality vulvas certainly won’t equip you to “blow any woman away in bed,” but breaking taboos with conversation might — as long as people can take it off-screen and get real.

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Use it or lose it means more than ever.

As of Monday dating app Bumble will require male users to reply to women's messages within 24 hours, or they lose the match, Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe told Mashable in an exclusive interview.

Among hundreds of dating apps, Bumble, which launched in 2014, is unique. Once a couple matches (through a swipe function similar to Tinder's), women must message within 24 hours or lose the match. At that point, men are permitted to message back.

Up until now, men had "essentially forever" to do so, says Wolfe.

Now they're beholden to the same time window as women are. Once a woman messages a guy, his countdown timer initiates. If he doesn't respond within a day, bye, bye, potential partner. 

Bumble wants to make it an "even keel" experience, says Wolfe. "She was held to 24 hours to reach out to you. We feel it's only fair you're confined to the same rules."

The app has been hailed as a feminist answer to online dating, in which women are empowered to make the first move if they choose. It also helps prevent aggressive and demeaning messages that litter the web on accounts like @tindernightmares. 

But ironically, Bumble says in allowing men unlimited time to consider messaging, it wasn't an equal playing field. 

"I know the whole idea is that it's empowering women, but it also just puts the ball in the guy's court and starts a 'wait and see' game," says New Yorker Lauren Drell, 30. "It means we need to rush but then a guy can take their time in replying back and vetting options."

Wolfe says by limiting both users to 24 hours, they can't "rack up" their number of matches anymore, which other platforms allow. "It's helping objectify women less." 

She also hopes the new tool helps prevent ghosting, when people stop talking to their matches online, either because they forgot or in a passive-aggressive way to break up.

Bumble is confident in its new choice. Besides being the No. 1 most requested feature, says Wolfe, during testing in the UK over one week the male 24-hour timer increased response rate by 20%. 

As for LGBTQ couples, either person may still initiate a conversation within 24 hours, but now the second person must still respond within 24 hours as well. They "take turns," says Wolfe.

Since its launch, women have "made the first move" 50 million times on Bumble. It's a proud figure for the company, which combats the stereotype of a "desperate" woman as the one who initiates the conversation.  

"It shouldn't be game changing," says Wolfe. Women should be able to function equally in the dating world. 

Until then, everyone has 24 hours to reply.

The app is available for free on iOS and Android.

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