The Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Dating

I hope you enjoyed the last blog on Online Dating. If you’re not a single adult forward this blog to someone else who care about who could benefit from these blogs?  Despite all the differing opinions there are advantages and disadvantages to online dating.

As a former single adult pastor I’ve seen the up and the downside of online dating. Today, 2 out of 5 relationships begin online and people who once were reluctant to admit they used online dating are rarer.

While researching this vast complicated and emotionally charged subject over the years, especially for Christians, I have discovered perhaps along with you, that there is lot of conflicting information about online dating. In the process of writing this blog I came across an article entitled “How Do I Love Thee?” in the Atlantic Monthly that is worth reading.

Although a very pragmatic article, it has a lot of good factual data that offers fairly objective critiques of the scientific matchmaking of eHarmony, Match.com and Chemistry.com. The article raises important questions about the data these scientists are collecting on relationships and personality types.

These web sites all have full time staff PhDs in the social sciences, anthropology, and psychology that are constantly polling and testing thousands of willing participants that will help people find their best possible match.

Of course this research and development helps these sites become successful, but is all this test tube data reliable and does it take out the mystique of romance and remove the human factor of face-to-face connection?  Remember while the data can be very helpful, it will never be infallible.  According to some there are advantages and disadvantages to online dating.

Advantages:

•          Meeting people existing outside social networks where they would otherwise never meet
•          Meeting more people quicker with similar core values, faith, interests, background and preferences
•         Offers privacy and confidentiality (turns out now this is not necessarily true)
•      More convenient than other ways of trying to meet people
•          Safer than many other conventional dating methods

The advantage to ‘scientific’ online dating isn’t to come up with some foolproof formula for romantic connection, but it can offer a safeguard to prevent you from making a poor choice.

Disadvantages:

·        People lie about themselves. 61% of users report concerns about members misrepresenting themselves.

According to Lori Gottlieb, the author of the article How Do I Love Thee? says, “Women tend to lie in their profiles about their weight and their age. And men tend to lie about their height and how much hair they have. That just seems to be a given. But there are other things that people may lie about as well—and I use the word "lie" loosely. They may answer questions in a way that's sort of fudging the truth a little bit…

• Users hide information about themselves and one cannot know for certain someone’s true character.They may not tell things about them you need to know
• Geographical distance makes physical closeness difficult, if not impossible
• Increased potential for identity theft.
• The speed of the online relationship cannot ensure you’re seeing a person for who they really are and all you need to know about someone’s past experiences
• Wasted resources.  A third of all online dating users have never met anyone face to face as a result of their time, efforts and money.

Please know these recent blogs are not endorsements of any kind. In a few days you won’t want to miss our last blog of this series as we look at the cautions and red flags of online dating and some concluding thoughts. 

Please feel free to share your comments below. If you would like to share any experiences on a personal level please feel free to email me at: mark@startingoverworkshops.com  If your experiences are used in a blog they will be used anonymously.