14 DAY TRIAL // The time when you admitted in public to using online dating websites to meet new people and felt ashamed for it is gone. A new study has shown that this is the second most popular method used today of finding Mr. or Mrs. Right.
Whereas, before the Internet, people used to meet through friends and family or, at best, by chance, today, if we're offline, we can almost kiss our chances of finding true love goodbye.
At least, that's the conclusion of a new study from the University of Rochester in the US as cited by Eureka: online dating can actually help you find true love.
“Online dating is definitely a new and much needed twist on relationships,” Harry Reis, one of the authors of the study and professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, says.
This explains why so many Americans are using such services in the hope of meeting new people, people they might find true love with.
“The Internet holds great promise for helping adults form healthy and supportive romantic partnerships, and those relationships are one of the best predictors of emotional and physical health,” Reis says.
There's a big “if” here though: while online dating virtually expands the number of people you could meet if you wanted to, it doesn't necessarily mean it can guarantee you true love.
Online dating is ideal for singles who look to interact with other singles, but it can't effectively promise the interaction will end in marriage – and NOT in heartbreak.
There's also the question of how going online to look for a potential mate affects one's view on love and romance: there's no denying that online dating is more “pragmatic” and dream-killing than, say, going on blind dates.
“Comparing dozens and sometimes hundreds of possible dates may encourage a 'shopping' mentality in which people become judgmental and picky, focusing exclusively on a narrow set of criteria like attractiveness or interests. And corresponding by computer for weeks or months before meeting face-to-face has been shown to create unrealistic expectations, he says,” Eureka writes, citing the aforementioned study.
As with everything else, there's pros and cons. Whether the one outweighs the other is up to the single looking for love to decide.