Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Ryan Ruddock
Warfe, S
ENGL-100-1406
16 December 2015
Is Online Dating the best way to date?
Online dating has recently exploded. Within the last few years, online dating has
become one of the most popular ways to date. But, is online dating taking over the dating
scene as a whole? In order to discover the answer to this question, through analysis, and
comparison of data the conclusion will be revealed. Online dating may pose a challenging
or helpful option to people with different lifestyles.
On April 21st, 1995, Match.com launched. According to Aaron Smith and Monica
Anderson of Pewresearch, at the time only 14% of American adults were internet users,
(Smith). Clearly by this extremely low number, online dating was not the best way to date
at this time since the amount of people in the scene was so small, finding someone in
your area would be difficult, and if you did find someone in your area, what if you didnt
like them? Suddenly you had no one else to find on the site. But since then, the internet
and the percentage of American adults that use the internet has also drastically changed.
A study that was done through telephone interviews that surveyed 1,006 American adults
by Pewresearchs Susannah Fox and Lee Raine in 2014 concluded that in the year 2014,
87% of American Adults now use the internet (Fox). Thats a huge increase, but we must
also take into account the introduction of smart phone. In 2010, IAC released their third
quarter results. Elyse Romano, states that In 2010, only 8% of North American users
accessed products [dating sites] via mobile. In 2014, it's 81%.(Romano) As phones
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developed, the familiarity with them also increased. Whenever you are walking
somewhere, you are almost guaranteed to see someone looking at their phone. A phone is
much more convenient than a computer as it is smaller, less expensive, discrete and more
readily available, and according to PewResearchs Mobile Technology Fact Sheet, as of
January 2014, 90% of American adults own a cell phone.(Mobile). So it makes sense
that the increase of popularity in phones would be mirrored in the popularity of access to
these products via phone.
So, the internets huge. Tons of adults use it every day, but how many of them use
it for dating purposes? Well thankfully Smith and Anderson covered that too. One-infive adults ages 25-34 years old have used online dating, but its also popular with older
singles, too, (Smith). In other words, one of your fingers has tried online dating. Smith
and Anderson also provide the statistics that shows the percentage of Americans who
have used online dating by age, showing that the (25-34) and (35-44) are the age groups
that use it the most (Smith). So we know who uses dating apps now. But why do they use
online dating apps? Is it for hookups? Is it to find the one? Well Smith has the answers
yet again. Smiths research found that 24% of internet users have searched for
information online about someone they dated in the past, up from 11% in 2005. and
24% of internet users have flirted with someone online, up from 15% in 2005, (Smith).
So people use it for what we expect. To make sure that their old partners are doing worse
than them to feel uplifted, and to flirt with people they think are hot. We know who uses
these sites, we know how they access the sites, and we know why they use these sites.
But how successful are these sites in finding your significant other?
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Two studies found with results of how successful online dating was, including Mic, who
conducted a consumer survey asking how people met their significant other. Through
looking at this surveys results, most people met through their friends at a 38.6%, and
22.3% being out and about, or at work. And then you have online dating, sitting there at
9.4%. Contradictory to this information however is a study done by University of
Chicago Psychologist John Cacioppo who found 34.95% of married couples who were
currently or previously together met their partner online (Cacioppo). Not only did
Cacioppo find that more than 1/3 of married couples met online. He also discovered that
the couples that did meet online had a more satisfying relationship. Results indicated
that of the continuing marriages, those in which respondents met their spouse on-line
were rated as more satisfying than marriages that began in an off-line meeting. Moreover,
analyses of break-ups indicated that marriages that began in an on-line meeting were less
likely to end in separation or divorce than marriages that began in an off-line venue.
(Cacioppo).
Online dating is successful with nearly 1/3 of the population using it. But is it the
best way to date? What if some creepy person poses as a beautiful woman and kidnaps
you? What if the person you matched with on tinder has a horrible secret like collecting
their clipped toe and finger nails? The first issue of someone posing as another is not
something that can occur in real life (Unless this dude/girl is seriously good at makeup or
has had reconstructive surgery to look like a girl/dude) but the second issue is something
that will always terrorize the world. The only way to discover this deep dark hidden
secret is to truly become romanticized with this individual to the point of knowing nearly
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(If not everything) everything about them. There are a lot of downsides to online dating,
and there are a lot of good things about it too, so lets go over those.
The first downside about online dating is the first issue I pointed out, which has
its own name Cat fishing. The term cat fishing, according to the site SocialCatfish,
originated from an old fish story. Basically cod would become bored and understimulated while being inside a fish tank during boat rides. Someone decided to put
catfish in the tanks with cod since they are its natural predators to stimulate the cod and
keep them moving (SocialCatfish). In dating, cat fishing is done by using fake
information and sometimes even fake pictures to lure in potential partners. This is
sometimes done out of boredom or done in hopes of luring the person being catfished to
fall in love with this fake persona, find out it isnt true, but be able to accept the false
information and fall in love with the fisher anyway. Of course, it usually doesnt end
that way. Most of the time the fisher gets found out, then nagged out or beat up
depending on the person being catfished.
Another downside of online dating is the men:women ratio. The reason men dont match
as much as women is because of the male versus female usage of the app itself. Felim
McGrath of GlobalWebIndex states that By gender, men outnumber women on Tinder
(60:40) (McGrath). So there, again, is another downside of online dating that is not only
bad for men, but also for women. When people are given too many choices and know that
they have a HUGE number of choices, they are faced with a dilemma. This dilemma is
that they think they could always be doing better. What if that person you matched with is
only half as cool as the person you would match with next week? It is a never-ending
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cycle that can only be broken by accepting your initial choice, testing if you enjoy it, and
then coming to the conclusion that the choice is suitable for you.
What used to be a downside of online dating was communication. Through text,
expressing emotions was incredibly difficult, and messages could easily be
misinterpreted. The most common messages that were misinterpreted are those involving
sarcasm. When someone says I hate you in actual life, we have several things to let us
know if they are being serious or not. We have body language, vocal cues, gestures, and
their facial expression. In text, we had nothing, but now Emojis are being used
constantly throughout the world. These Emojis are absolutely perfect for conveying
emotion through text. When someone says I hate you they can now put I hate you
which allows for the recipient of this text to see the emoji and make the connection that
the sender is of course joking. But what about those long speeches that you wish to make
your love beloved? Over text simply cannot do for the love you wish to express, the deep
yearning in your heart to tell them how your love for them is greater than the heat of fresh
lasagna. Why cant a text through your phone be similar to the merit of a handwritten
letter delivered by carrier pigeon? Well it actually can be. You can easily order flowers, or
letters from the internet and have them sent to your chosen recipient so they may feel the
warmth of your love without you ever have to actually put in that effort of handwriting a
letter to them.
One of the best things about online dating is its convenience. Similar to how you can
send a text from nearly anywhere, you can online date nearly anywhere. In the middle of
the desert a little past Las Vegas because maybe you got a little too turnt up at the casino?
Online date! Theres also an incredible amount of options for online dating that are
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available on any platform. Compared to real life where you must wait to find people who
are actively searching for a companion, online dating simply displays them. Through just
googling online dating, you can find a plethora of services (Okcupid, Match, Eharmony,
etc.) The most popular service for mobile is the app called Tinder. Jessica James
describes the process of using Tinder as, With just a swipe of the finger, Tinder users can
find, or rather, select, romantic matches based on individual preference (James). James
also brings up a survey where 578 Texas University students participated, 35% of which
noted the convenience of online dating, and Ten percent of subjects said they were
attracted to online dating because of social anxiety and considered themselves shy
people (James). This means that the 35% of people who acknowledged the convenience
may never go back to bars, which can lead to a chain reaction of the bar scene becoming
less popular.
Another upside of online dating is you know that the other person is interested in dating.
At a bar, some people are there to just hangout or wind down after a long day of work, or
maybe to get away from the family, and there is a chance that no one there is even
interested in dating, you simply cannot know. And what about those 10% of people that
liked dating because they were shy? How would they feel if they got the confidence to go
up and talk to someone only to be rejected? Certainly they wouldnt have enough courage
to try again for quite a while, which brings me to my next point.
Most dating apps on phones have a brilliant way of preventing you from being
rejected. How is this done, you may be asking. Well, for example, on Tinder, which is a
very simplistic although brilliant dating app, you are shown four things when looking for
a potential partner: Their picture, like, dont like, or super like. In order to even
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communicate with someone on Tinder, you must have both liked (Super like counts as a
like) each other. This means that if someone doesnt like your face or your dad-bod,
youll never hear from them. This removes the fear of rejection, and gives you the
confidence to try again.
So, is online dating the best way to date? When comparing online dating to real
life dating or whatever you would like to call it, I would say yes. The benefits of online
dating include convenience, privacy, anti-rejection, and more choice, where as real life
dating limits you to people that you know, people that the people you know know, or
family friends. However, I would also say that online dating can only be correctly used
by certain people. If you are a quiet, nervous, overthinking person, online dating probably
isnt for you as it demands the user to think of all possible negative outcomes; while
allowing for non-immediate action, whereas real life would require that immediate
action. But if you are a calm, cool, suave, collected person, online dating would simply
streamline the process of dating as a whole, and would therefore be a faster and more
efficient option.
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Works Cited:
Smith, Aaron, and Monica Anderson. "5 Facts about Online Dating." Pew Research
Center RSS. N.p., 20 Apr. 2015. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/20/5-facts-about-online-dating/
"Catfishing - What Is It, Where It Came from and the Psychology Behind Catfish Online
Dating Scams | People Search - SocialCatfish.com." People Search SocialCatfishcom.
Web. 13 Dec. 2015.
<https://socialcatfish.com/what-is-catfishing-online-dating/>
Fox, Sussanah, and Lee Raine. "The Web at 25 in the U.S." Pew Research Center
Internet Science Tech RSS. N.p., 26 Feb. 2014. Web. 13 Nov. 2015.
<http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/02/27/the-web-at-25-in-the-u-s/>
Romano, Elyse. "IAC Reports Q3 2014 Results." RSS. N.p., 15 Nov. 2014. Web. 13 Nov.
2015.
http://www.datingsitesreviews.com/article.php?story=iac-reports-q3-2014-results
James, Jessica. MOBILE DATING IN THE DIGITAL AGE: COMPUTER-MEDIATED
COMMUNICATION AND RELATIONSHIP BUILDING ON TINDER. 2015. Print.
"Mobile Technology Fact Sheet." Pew Research Center. N.p., Oct. 2015. Web. 12 Nov.
2015.
<http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/mobile-technology-fact-sheet/>
Smith, Aaron, and Maeve Duggan. "Online Dating & Relationships." Pew Research
Center Internet Science Tech RSS. N.p., 20 Oct. 2013. Web. 13 Nov. 2015.
<http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/10/21/online-dating-relationships/>
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Leibowitz, Lauren. "The Way Most People Meet Their Significant Others Is Not What
You Think." Mic. N.p., 06 Mar. 2015. Web. 13 Nov. 2015.
http://mic.com/articles/112062/the-way-most-people-meet-their-significant-others-is-notwhat-you-think#.90qusIVHN
McGrath, Felim. "What to Know About Tinder in 5 Charts." What to Know About Tinder
in 5 Charts. Web. 13 Dec. 2015.
http://www.globalwebindex.net/blog/what-to-know-about-tinder-in-5-charts