Online Dating

3-5 paragraphs minimum]

Imagine you’re looking for a partner through an online dating site (or you’re giving advice to someone you care about who’s looking for a partner online). Consider the sources available in this chapter, particularly those related to online dating, the future of families, and emotional/economic connections. Then, address this prompt. 

Using your sociological imagination, explain how meeting potential “dates and mates” has changed because of online dating platforms.

In your explanation, speculate how at least one aspect of “dating and mating” factors into the popularization and effectiveness of online dating (dates=spending time with someone who might be a potential partner, usually a romantic partner; mates=a partner a person marries to either establish a family and/or raise children).

Here are some aspects you could explore:

• meeting in virtual communities first, then in physical space (benefits/costs?)
• effectiveness of online dating platforms at matching partners (when participants are honest)
• how consumption in the economic market ties to dating (money spent to date)
• if changing gender norms/roles are accommodated (who initiates contact, etc.)
• economies of gratitude (how the value of roles matter)
• new connections/friends (ostensibly, no common people in lives at all)
• the “marriage market” (exchange theory matters here)
• the “wedding industrial complex” (multi-billion dollar industry)
• if/how homogamy, propinquity, endogamy, and exogamy matter
• general online options for developing relationships in the next twenty years (play it out for the next generation)