Internet dating has taken America by storm. And with almost 125 million singles now living in the US, it doesn’t appear likely to slow down any time soon. At first matchmakers coast-to-coast felt threatened by this new way of meeting people, but as the industry matured it only reinforced the need for trusted intermediaries and experienced professionals.
San Francisco Gate author Amy Gaff reported this week on a recent study conducted by Aditi Paul, a doctoral candidate at Michigan State University’s Department of Communications. Aditi wanted to look at what happens to relationships of people who met online that don’t result in marriage.
She found that couples who meet online are not only less likely to get married, they are more likely to break up. Then she gave three reasons why she thinks online relationships are less successful than relationships formed offline.
1) Online dating has been shown to provide individuals with too many options to choose from that leads to a lack of exclusivity where individuals find it difficult to be locked into one particular dating partner when they know that hundreds of other potential dating partners are available. This also leads to delayed commitment to the person with whom they ultimately choose to date and start a relationship. This is because online daters know that they can easily look for other potential partners from the dating sites or SNS if the current relationship does not work out.
2) Relationships initiated online take more time to develop compared to relationships initiated offline.
3) Online daters have also shown to take more time to develop relationships purposefully in order to increase the level of trust with their partners, given some of the negative stigma associated with online dating. Eighty-six percent of online daters have reported being concerned about falsification of personal information and deceptive self-presentation of their dating partners.
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