Online dating is a preliminary method where individuals can
find and contact others over the Internet to arrange a “date”. Their goals can differ
from developing a romantic, erotic or personal relationship. These online
dating services provide a form of matchmaking over the Internet. Users will
usually obtain a profile where personal information will be added to attract
their other. The idea of online dating has become increasingly popular and
accepted than it was in the past but even so, I still believe that a “stigma”
still exists.
Knowledge in class proved that if an individual is heavily
involved with computer mediated communication; they are more likely to use
online dating sites. Other reasons include developing relationships through
shared interests or a site to primarily share their feelings and perspectives
about life or interests. Data proved online dating sites are effective in that
94% of individuals will email again after building a relationship between
emailing and chatting. Research also found that men are more committed in
online dating sites than women. The advantage of these online dating sites is
that people are allowed to reveal their personal information slowly and at your
own pace but having a synchronous chat is important to further improve your
relationship.
The downside of online dating sites includes unlike face-to-face
communication, computer mediated communication lack communication cues. When
communication face to face, individuals are able to see the others eye contact,
laugh, touch and smile while how would you describe that online? Another
research by Reading proves disappointing where self-presentation online is
misrepresented 81% of the time. Aspects of misrepresentation include height,
weight and age. Individuals seemed to make themselves on average 0.77 inches
taller, 9 pounds lighter and half a year younger!
The documentary, “When Strangers Click” was watched in our
recent lab class. This movie consisted of various couples talking about their successful
online dating stories and that online dating isn’t such a bad thing after all. A
couple met each other and 3 months later were married. Others prove that online
dating was a hard journey at first but finally ended with their “one”. I
searched the documentary on a popular source; Facebook and saw that there was
only 1,122 likes. This attests that online dating may still be a new matter and
not very much talked about in the public.
A recent news article proved that even if there may be
various success stories of online dating presented in this HBO documentary but
some may tragically. Published on October, 20 of this year, a women named as
Genoveva Nunez-Figueroa was arrested after being located inside a chimney
trying to enter a home in California. She had met the man whose house she was
trying to enter online and had gone out on a few dates but he recently ended
the relationship. Online dating expert Rachel DeAlto stated “Unfortunately,
online dating can lead to scary situations and it doesn’t matter if you’re a
man or a women. You need to protect yourself and you don’t know who’s on the
other side of the computer until you meet them in person. Be protective of
where you live.” Reading the comments given on this news article, I see a
number of comments that are against online dating and how since it exists, the
only thing you can do is to be careful of all information you give online. These
comments seem to be mostly women ages over 40. Similarly in the documentary,
“When Strangers Click”, the mother of one of the female was very concerned and
apprehensive about her daughter flying all the way to see her online lover. It
could be said that in modern generation, online dating is more accepted than individuals
who are much older.
Research that was obtained on September, 7th of
this year prove that more than half of the total number of single people in the
United States have tried online dating at least once. (54,250,000 people to
41,250,000) A total of 15,500,000 individuals are listed in the dating site
eHarmony and an appalling 21,575,000 are currently members of match.com. The
annual revenue from the online dating industry is currently $1,249,000,000 and I
am very certain that this is just the beginning. In a world we live in where thousands
of other people are living outside of our country, cooking, sleeping, having
breakfast at this moment, online dating can prove effective to create
relationships with individuals you may never have met in your lifetime.
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