We have slowly and reluctantly accepted that the lives that we live on the internet are not just abstract rather; they hold meaning and sentiment for the most of us. We like to keep in touch with very close friends and even partners that we have become unfortunate enough to move away from, and we even find ourselves making new friends when online. So, since we have established and passed the responsibility over to the internet to take care of our emotional needs of this nature, we have also found that we can trust the same internet with the most important aspect of our lives, and that is the ability to use the internet for the purpose of intimacy ergo dating.
With the acceptance of this newly founded and universal phenomenon, we also worry about the implications of the relationships that we establish on the internet and what they might have in our actual lives. We cannot seem to answer that, even if we can find partners online, how compatible could they be when we move towards the ultimate challenge of living together in our tangible lives?
This is the reason why it is important for us to understand and evaluate whether or not, online dating could be considered as a substitute for actual dating. And so gets written this paper, with the intent of making discoveries in the same regard and then making use of our research to pick the winner in between online dating and real-life dating.
We are becoming more and more comfortable with online dating and what little concerns there might be are being overlooked more and more often. This could only be due to the reason that online dating does, in fact, present us with several upsides which are worth ignoring the
threats for. First and foremost, every committed person is bound to find a date online. Research has presented us with a lot of success stories when it tells us that one of every five relationships start from an online platform; be it Facebook, Twitter, or any kind of mobile app or even if it is through a dating site .
This means that when online, every person has a chance of finding a date and the same fact makes things easier for the people who seem to become awkward when they socialize and the ones that are shy and cannot muster the courage to set up a meeting face-to-face. The internet provides these individuals amongst all others with a medium which they could use for the purpose of communicating with people that they do not feel pressured to impress.
One research study in particular highlights all the pros that associate with online dating and says that the process of seeking a romantic partner has been changed by the rules online. In the traditional system of dating, we are used to meeting the person that we might believe fits well in our lives; we gather a general impression of that person and only afterwards do we even start to analyze the character traits and the habits that the potential partner possesses. In the world of online dating, the case seems to be simplified for us a bit since we are already provided with many character traits of the person, not one rather but many (Eli J. Finkel, 2012, p.3).
This makes it easier for people to choose the partners that they believe they might fit best with and after studying all of these character traits and making all of the necessary analyses, the person settles on a partner who is worthy of a date. This is a quality of the internet which makes it fairly easier for the seeker to find a person who is very likely to be ‘the one’ in his or her life and just like that, the likelihood of a date maturing into a relationship improves that much.
Over and above this particular advantage, since the information on the internet of the present day is freely available for everyone to see, it is easier to choose a person who can fit the criteria for a partner better and these qualities also let the person choose the characteristics in a partner which are important to that person and thereby further improving the likelihood of making the date successful and having it turn into a relationship. To present further proof in the matter, of all of the romantic relationships that started in between the years 2007 and 2009; 21 percent of the normal, while 61 percent of the same-sex couples had met online .
The evidence suggests that online dating is a successful singularity and because of its qualities of extending the dating horizon further than the geographical boundaries may allow, the options that are left at hand are far wider than might be available to couples who are seeking intimacy off of the internet. Take the same gay couples for instance; since their target is a group of people who is in the minority and from within that minority, it becomes more difficult to pick a more compatible partner, these people turn towards the internet as the way out of their quandary and in many cases, with success too.
Because our relationships are mostly very crucial to living a life of bliss, they forever remain the reason for our utmost concern and in the same concern, there is a number of us that worry about the intimacy or maybe the lack thereof when it comes to the relationships on the internet. We have tried to convince, and we have also let ourselves be convinced that there is no conversation above the one which has the power of happening face-to-face.
This is because, we have argued; the smile can never be replaced by a plain and simple emoji because, in a human smile, we could see a number of emotions ranging all the way from ecstasy to sadness. Try translating the same dimensions in a simple smile to a conversation over the internet without losing the honesty of the feeling behind that very simple yet quite an enlightening unspoken gesture.
This concern of ours has been answered by Stefana BroadBent, a tech anthropologist when she says that the internet is enabling intimacy rather than robbing us of the same quality. Research on our social networking websites has shown as that people may have close to a hundred or even five hundred friends on Facebook, but most of the conversation and the interaction take place with a chosen few; up to five is what the research says.
Broadbent says that the internet is being used as mean for keeping in touch with family and friends in ways that have enabled intimacy amongst couples, family members, and even friends. There has to be something romantic about a man taking a break from work and finding a quiet corner so that he could talk to his wife. There was also a time when there used to be phones hanging in public which these people could make use of to make contact with their loved ones, but maybe it was no good to talk that way because there might have been a line forming behind or maybe there was no privacy to talk freely with a dear one. The story of talking for long hours could be set aside altogether in a time such as that .
The internet has, in fact, enabled us to indulge more intimately with the people that we love and spend our days and nights with and in the midst of all of that, we can surely count on the same blessing to present us with that much-needed intimacy in the relationships that we might have established online.
Our lives are changing, and we are attaching more and more of our needs to the internet, and there is no reason why the building of personal relationships should be an exception. When done the right way, internet dating could bring very compatible people close to one another and from there, people may even embark on the journey of life hand in hand. So since we do have a constant presence on the web, relationships could be another benefit that it presents us with, and these relationships could work just as well. When equating the internet’s ability to increase compatibility, even more so that these relationships may have a chance in real lives. If we are committed to making it work, that is.
So to answer the question of whether or not internet dating could replace the conventional form of the practice, yes it very well can. The things that we spend days and weeks learning about the other person could now be found on the internet in a matter of hours. And since intimacy is no problem with any relationship that starts on the web, there is not much that lacks in this department. The success of the relationship only depends on the willingness of both partners in making at work when from that point forth.
So if we cannot say that the relationship on the internet is better than it is in real life, we can at least admit that the relationship which has its roots on the internet cannot lack in any department and could prove to be just as good as a face-to-face relationship.
References
Broadbent, S. (2009, July). How the Internet enables intimacy.
Eli J. Finkel, P. W. (2012). Online Dating: A Critical Analysis From the Perspective of Psychological Science. Association for Psychological Science, 3-66.
Rosenbloom, S. (2011, November 12). Love, Lies and What They Learned. The New York Times.
Spira, J. (2013, December 03). Online Dating Vs. Offline Dating: Pros and Cons. Huffington Post.
