Dating: Weird. Online Dating: Less Weird?

By Casey Pontrelli on July 21, 2016

A man and woman holding hands. Image courtesy of Flickr and Ryan McGinnis. (Disclaimer: Picture not of people in article.)

Dating is weird. Always has been, always will be. But the Internet has thrown a whole new wrench into that weird, awkward system. Well, I wouldn’t say new, but online dating’s recent explosion has changed the way people are meeting. The question is, has the change been beneficial?

Online dating is so much more convenient than going into a bar or coffee shop and hoping — no, PRAYING — that the cute person next to you will make eye contact and start a conversation. Why brave that when you can just swipe right on that cutie down the road?

And there are so many different platforms available. Tinder, Bumble, OkCupid, PlentyofFish, Match.com, and even CraigsList are just a couple of examples of websites or apps that allow single people look for dates, relationships, or whatever they’re looking for tonight.

According to this article, online dating has three main pros: choice, convenience, and its game-like nature.

Online dating allows anyone the opportunity to contact thousands of people from all over the world. There’s a lot more choice involved — the dating pool used to be limited geographically, but with online dating, it isn’t any more. For example, this study found that online dating can be a huge asset to people who have “thin dating markets,” such as LGBTQIA people.

Then there’s the convenience of online dating. There’s less worry about who’s looking for someone, less worrying about who’s taken or not. (Although, there are/were plenty of options for affair-seekers.)

However, this isn’t always a good thing — according to this article, that can lead you to feel as if potential partners are expendable. There are more people out there who might be a match. Why limit yourself to one match when you can have 10? Or why settle for one partner when you have access to plenty?

To top it all off, the game-like nature of these platforms “makes it seem less real,” James Stych, kinesiology senior said.

“At some point, we forget that we’re swiping on actual people,” Stych said. “You get the little notification that you have another match, and it’s like you’ve won a game. It’s honestly a little addicting.”

This article states that we are not only getting validation from the attention from potential partners, but the game aspect can actually make us addicted to this type of dating through the random notifications. It can be validating and addicting in the same way beating a level on Candy Crush is.

But don’t worry — there’s still hope. According to this study, married couples who met through online dating were happier and less likely to be divorced. There are a few theories about why that might be, one of which is that when people communicate online, they tend to self-disclose more, which can lead to a stronger bond more quickly.

“I knew the second I started talking to him on Tinder my boyfriend was the one for me,” Monique Geisen, journalism sophomore said. “I feel like I got so lucky — we just clicked immediately and have always gotten along so well. Online dating definitely worked for us!”

So, long story short — the Internet isn’t killing dating, or making it any worse. In fact, despite what this Vanity Fair article is saying, it might be making it better.

This study found that as more people used the Internet, marriage rates actually increased. Not to say that online dating created higher rates of marriage, but it certainly didn’t cause them to drop.

This study found that today’s college students actually have less sex and fewer sex partners than pre-Internet college students. That means the dreaded “hook-up culture” existed before the Internet — and that maybe the Internet is making it safer?

So, fellow single people, next time someone complains about the “dating apocalypse” online dating is supposed to be causing, remember what Samhita Mukhopadhyay, author of “Outdated: Why Dating Is Ruining Your Love Life,” said on Al-Jazeera America in response to the Vanity Fair article.

“Tools such as Tinder (or Grindr, Bumble, Hinge, etc.) have opened up space for people that traditionally didn’t have the greatest access to sex or relationships,” Mukhopadhyay said. “These tools have had a powerful effect on our ability to be choosy. You no longer have to marry the guy next door. These are benefits for all daters, not just entitled, sexist stockbrokers.”

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