Online dating has replaced talking with texting. Finding love has become very hard these days because of the amount of technological tools evolving. Online dating apps and social media have taken a toll on the idea of traditional romance and marriage. According to Brainz, “in 2007, Americans spent over 500 million dollars on online dating, which became the second highest industry for “paid content”’(The Editors, n.d, p.8). This shows the amount of users and with it now being 2018 and how much online dating has evolved. There is many users utilizing these apps, but it does not necessarily mean it is put to use positively. Online dating has taken away the traditional ideas of romance and marriage by many dating apps and social media hence taking away face to face interactions and tough emotional online dating recoveries.
Anatomy of Love
The anatomy of love is important in order to understand the true reason behind this controversial topic. The basic ingredients of love includes “validating communications between the partners on … understanding and concern for the partner’s personal and emotional needs, developing companionship, physical attractiveness, cultivating and nurturing physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual well beings, respecting, supporting, forgiving, accepting and encouraging…. To accomplish the above tasks, the partners need to engage in the meaningful interactions (face-to-face interactions, including both verbal and nonverbal communications), which allow one person to give to and receive from the other” (Sun, 2010, p. 6).
In other words, the traditional idea of love consist of actual face to face interactions whereas physical gestures are important to really define traditional romance. These little thing is what creates the whole idea that makes traditional romance so special. Unlike online dating, it is romance through a cell phone screen. This is important because it proves that love isn’t just a phone to phone thing, it is much more and consist of various components to make the romance actual romance. The anatomy of love, may be defined differently for everyone, but the most common is a feeling of strong affection for a person. Feeling these emotions for someone online is a very common thing, but the basic ingredients to make it real and traditional romance are just as important as the romance itself. The face to face interactions are really what makes the romance the traditional romance. Romance through a cell phone screen is a bad way to show love for someone because it will never be 100% if it is true emotion. In person, one can right away tell the true romance from fake romance by gestures, facials expressions and, the way one acts.
Online Romance (Cons)
Furthermore, there is various dating apps and social media apps that have really taken away the true idea of love. To begin with, dating apps are these tools that upcoming generations are using in order to find their “partners romantically.” Some dating apps include, Tinder, Bumble, and E-Harmony. All these apps are tools where people go on and meet random strangers and after a couple of texts, love is claimed. That “good morning” text has replaced the breakfast in bed. That “get home safe” text has replaced I’ll drive you home and make sure you are alright. Simple messages have really taken the idea of physical acts to show affection for one. This all goes to show that traditional ideas of marriage and romance are dead! Social media- Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram – all play roles in cons of dating online. In the scholarly article it is mentioned that “Like traditional scams, online romance scams not only result in emotional damage, but also cost victims millions of dollars each year” (Rege, 2009, p. 5).
This goes to prove how online dating can lead to various types of hurt, emotionally or physically. Many scammers are out there to act like they are so into someone, but it is all catfish and people trying to get something from people trying to find “love” on these apps. Traditional romance would not have all these precautions because the face to face interactions would show the truth of the person. People catfish through online dating, and can bring up the question on if the romance is even true. Instead people are finding romance with someone specific thinking they are someone else. Point proves that online dating has killed traditional ideas of romance because people can be manipulative and use fake profiles to ruin the love life of one. The intentions of an online dater are never fully understood, unless met in person.
Have we Killed Romance?
To add on to the argument that we have killed the idea of romance and marriages. It is now seen on the importance of the quality of dates. Mydomaine say that “What’s important is not the quantity of our dates; it’s the quality of our interactions’ (Savoie, 2018, p. 10). This is important because the way interactions are made is a lot more important than the amount of times the interactions are made. Communicating with people through social media and not giving full attention, perhaps not paying full attention to who could be a true love is a toxic thing because the attention span is not there. Dating online kills the whole aspect of true romance conversation and body language of the partner. To continue this idea, thanks to online dating, expectations of romance have changed drastically. If a specific text or phone call is not received, assumptions are automatically made towards the partner. It has created this idea that romance is all about a text back or a full on attention span through a cell phone screen. All these components make online dating to be the worst thing that happened to romance because it takes away from the classic ideas of romance and marriage. Lastly, marriages last a lot less now a days. In the article by Psychology Today It is said that “according to research conducted at Michigan State University, relationships that start out online are 28% more likely to break down in their first year, than relationships where the couples first met face-to-face” (Anderson, 2016, p. 15).
This is important because that is a decent percent to prove how online dating fails to make the relationships last due to them not working in the first year. The idea of marriage is not even an option if relationships are this short. They also mention that “Couples who met online are nearly 3 times as likely to get divorced as couples that met face-to-face” (Anderson, 2016, p. 15). This is not shocking because of course, how is non face to face interaction relationship going to last and make a long lasting marriage. This is all important because traditional ideas of romance and marriage, prosper and last because knowing the person in person is key to understanding why someone is the way they are. Lastly, there might be arguments that online dating is a safe way to communicate and commit before going on a date face to face with a complete stranger.But to be completely honest, it is not as safe because the person behind the computer can be making up lies on who they really are. As Psychology Today mentions “it is harder to evaluate a potential match online… some of the cues and features that build attraction (like touching) cannot be accomplished through a computer. So, such computer-mediated communication may have an artificial and unemotional quality” (Nicholson, 2014, p. 9). Meaning, face to face interactions are important in order to evaluate the true emotions of the partners.
Conclusion
To conclude, online dating has killed the traditional idea of romance and marriage. All the dating apps, social media, and technology have taken the true idea of love. Romance and marriage is an important thing and significant thing for many, from different religions, races, and cultures, so for one to find romance through dating apps and not face to face interactions it takes away from the fantasizes of a beautiful marriage. Most likely the person met on a dating app is not even nearby. And well the story goes on from there.
