The Dangers of Online Dating
A hidden truth about screen to screen love connections
February 5, 2019
Technology has threaded itself into modern society’s culture, and spread like wildfire into all aspects of human life. While technology has brought great advancements, it has also poisoned the purity of human interaction. At first, technology was seen as a helping hand towards obtaining an easier way of life. Now, instead of connecting heart to heart, people are connected through the bright screens of their cellphones, a hidden mask which prevents them from fully exposing themselves as a person. Technology has now created a burden and loss of humanity as love has been generated into the codes of an app.
According to Eharmony.com, 40% of U.S. citizens use some sort of online dating app such as Tinder, Bumble and Matched. The obvious problem with these apps is their false sense of creating an ideal match. Instead of relying on human instincts to find a suitable partner, people are turning towards algorithms and spreadsheets jumbled with facts and numbers to spit out their perfect soul mate.
It was not long ago that relationships began with a smile, a wave or a simple hello. After the emergence of the mid-1990s dating websites followed, such as Match.com and the control of finding a partner was enabled with a click.
This marked a huge transformation for studying human mating habits, as most sites require preferences and qualities of interest. Science ended up disproving the compatibility between people with shared traits.
Found in the Journal of Psychological Science, it is stated that it is impossible to figure out whether people who have the same values and character traits will fall in love. This defeats the idea that dating apps narrow the long search for a soulmate as it actually drives people in the wrong direction.
The Journal also states that deliberate suggestion can influence what people chose. This can be applied to online dating as a person is presented, similar to a product. They are then described as a perfect match. Most people will fall for this temptation and develop false hope and want to have faith within the app. In reality, these websites have no general logic behind placing people together. The only reasoning used within the apps for pairing people together is by finding common qualities which has never been proven to work.
Not only is the pure science behind online dating a sham, it is part of a bigger scam through online subscriptions. Only five percent of all users remain in a stable relationship until engagement according to Match.com. This means there is a constant surplus of users to generate money off of as their subscription is being constantly used after their failure of relationships. Online dating is a way to generate money by supplying a fake solution towards the need to be in a relationship.
Lastly, the horrible reality of online dating is the lack of face-to-face conversation. This can lead to disconnection, fake relationships and even death.
Eharmony.com once again claims that over half of their users have never meet their pair in real life. This means that these so-called matches are connected on their ability to create thought out responses through text and never happen to go anywhere in their relationship. This ends up more as a waste of time than anything else.
Even though a mass of people still end up in contact in the real world, they are sometime baffled by the person in front of them.
BuzzFeed states that one in every 10 profiles online is fake. Catfishing, luring someone into a relationship by means of a fictional online persona, has become extremely common this day in age. This can lead to sexual assault, as 28% of people on online dating sites who meet in person have been harassed by their date. The scary reality is that online dating websites and apps allow sexual predators to easily target a victim and hide under a screen name. It also allows for heartbreak as people have fallen for fake accounts and learned the hard truth of their ideal match being a fraud.
Online dating has shown to be a match, that has lit a fire within society. To be able to access love through online connection seems a great way of staying inside and not searching through everyday life. The connection through wires wears thin, as behind the screen is not always what it seems to be. Online dating is gaining toxic popularity and slowly taking over students and adults. Humanity has seem to have lose its touch with itself, as people are now falling in love with screens.
