At this day and age, the internet has been proven to be beneficial for society worldwide — despite the downfall as well. One thing for certain, internet brings people to a broader world of communication, which leads to better opportunities to access informations and potentially meet future needs. Either for business purposes, finding community, or even to find a love interest.
The editor of The New York Times’ popular Vows column, a weekly feature on notable weddings and engagements, pointed out that online dating apps has really made a change. It was discovered that 7 out of 53 couples profiled in the Vows column in 2018 met online. From this alone, it can be seen that dating sites or apps has expanded the reach of singles’ social networks, facilitating interactions between people who may never have crossed paths.
History of Online Dating
The way people meet their partners has changed dramatically in recent years. Twenty years ago, as now, most couples said they met through their friends or family, at work, in educational institutions, or even religious sites. But that changed in the 1990s, where the first dating site, Match.com, came on then following in early 2000s, a new wave of dating site like OKCupid emerged. The arrival of Tinder in 2012 makes the change in dating even further, and today, online dating is the second most common way for heterosexual couples to meet, whereas for homosexual couples it is far and away the most popular.
A survey conducted in 2013 found that 77% of people considered having their smartphone with them at all times to be a very important thing. Correlating to online dating, more than 15% of adults say that they have used either mobile dating apps or an online dating site at least once in the past. With that said, statistics suggest that about 1 in 5 relationships begin online nowadays, and by 2040 we will be looking up to 70% of us will have met our significant other online.
Online Dating Impacts on Relationship
It’s obvious that online dating has brought the dating world to the next level. With online dating, people get the opportunity to meet a wide variety of potential partners that later on might end up meeting in real life. Moreover, most online dating websites provide the options for people to choose of the personalities that they’re looking for in a partner which would be very helpful to narrow the search on finding the “perfect match”.
For more than 50 years, researchers have studied the nature of the networks that link people to each other. Starting by simulating what happens when extra links are introduced into a social network which consists of men and women from different races who are randomly distributed. Based on the research, the result reveals that the change the dating sites or apps brings influence to interracial marriage and even the stability of the marriage itself.
The researchers found a shred of intriguing evidence that shortly after the introduction of the first dating websites in 1995, the percentage of new marriages of interracial couples increased rapidly. The increase became steeper in the 2000s when online dating became even more popular, and the proportion keeps on jumping after Tinder came along. Meanwhile, research into the strength of marriage has found some evidence that married couples who meet online have lower rates of marital breakup than those who meet traditionally.
In addition, despite the claims regarding dating sites or apps are causing people to jump from one potential love interest to another, the latter research has proven otherwise. Considered as a profound revelation, the changes in meeting people and dating online are predicted to continue on bringing benefit to society as a result.
