Download Online Dating Paper

1
Jalen Cross
Decemeber 4, 2015
Writer’s Memo
The biggest problem I had with writing this essay is trying to find credible and relevant
information to base my research upon. It seems like everyone has an opinion on my topic and a
lot of the times they vary for different reasons. But since everyone has their own aspect of what’s
true and what’s not it’s hard to establish an event as true or not. What intimidated me the most
about this paper was the length of it, seeing a requirement of a certain amount of pages makes
me extremely nervous, so nervous that I think that I can’t write that many. I coped by writing as
much as I could without giving you information that had nothing to do with the topic; because I
feel like you’d much rather me not meet the page requirement than just write anything in order to
get that last page. My overall process for this paper was to push out as much information that I
knew and then research what I already knew in order to add on to that. After I researched and
organized it all I tried to make it flow better. I feel like most of my ideas were obvious, a lot of
them I took from what I observe on social media and on television. I chose the topics I wrote
about because I feel like they happen to many people and thus it involves other people.
2
Is Online Dating Fruitful?
When I first started to research online dating I found it interesting that online dating has
so many downfalls but even so, it remains extremely popular. Does it remain popular because the
reasons for using online dating outweigh the reasons not to? Or maybe the reason is more
personal and analytical. Online dating started becoming more popular in the mid 1990’s when
people started realizing that they could really narrow down their preferences. Online dating has
and continues to grow at a higher and higher rate. It has become more accepted over the past
couple of years. In 2010, 2% of all married couples met on eHarmony, one of the most popular
dating websites at the time and now. As of April 2015, 5% of Americans that are married or in a
committed relationship say they met their significant other online. Many people I know say that
online dating just seems like too much work for not enough result. Online dating gives people a
sense of security; It allows them to be more comfortable and express themselves exactly how
they would like to without being judged in person. So my question is Online dating Fruitful?
Many people believe that online dating is only for older people and shut-ins, but it is
actually really effective for people who have a busy work schedule. You go to work all day, go
home and wish that you had the energy and desire to go outside and mingle but it just isn’t
practical. So instead of going to the bar or the club and hoping that you meet someone, you can
just go online and search through profiles that have the same interests as you. Online dating can
also be helpful for people with mental illnesses to find a relationship. People with mental
illnesses are often avoided and ridiculed so they don’t have a lot of opportunities to meet other
people with the same illnesses. Online dating is also helpful for people who have been married
for a long time and got separated, they might feel like it would be unlikely to fall in love again so
they go to a source where they know they can talk to someone easily. I’ve acquired the opinions
3
of many VCU students about online dating, many students say that they wouldn’t use online
dating unless it was a last resort, or worst case scenario they haven’t found and they’re like forty
years old. I find it interesting that my age group would believe online dating to be for older
people when young adults are almost always on the internet. I researched the topic and found
that most of online daters are between the ages 27-35.
One downfall that I believe is the most evident is deception. Deception is more common
online because it is easier to manipulate information. When it’s so easy to get away with lying,
people feel like it’s a chance worth taking in order to find love. I always see people on Instagram
and Facebook who alter their photos so that they look better. People who are less attractive are
more likely to enhance their photos or put things in their biography that aren’t true in order to
attract a mate. It’s intriguing to observe the amount of deception on the internet through online
dating. The dating world can be very harsh. Most people won’t even communicate with a person
if they don’t find them attractive. Surveys have shown that if you are physically attractive and
also have good communication skills you are seen to be more trustworthy than someone who is
not as attractive or someone who has less communication skills. Even though online dating gives
users many opportunities to meet, most people have no clue who they are actually
communicating with. I did research on this and found that Two thirds of online daters roughly
66% say that they have gone on a date with someone they met through a dating site or dating
app. That is a substantial increase from the 43% of online daters who had actually progressed to
the date stage in 2005. But it still means that one-third of online daters have not yet met up in
real life with someone they initially found on an online dating site. From experience I know that
it is really easy to be tricked online because it’s difficult to determine if the person you’re
communicating with has the same intent that you do. I looked over one case in which a man
4
tricked women into sending him money. In August, a british man was sent to jail after defrauding
two women over $455,300 through online dating sites. He had convinced them that he was a
diplomat and that a US Marine General had fallen in love with them, causing one woman to
pawn jewelry, take out loans, and sell her car to help the US general move to the UK. She got
nothing. Most scammers target people who are older than they are. People are often ashamed to
come forward and admit that they’ve been duped. It’s not a good feeling to have been taken
advantage of, and a scheme that’s so obvious in hindsight is even harder to admit to. Some
people just want to meet so that they can do you harm like in the case where a man was tricking
women into meeting them. After he met them he robbed them at gunpoint. Many people would
say that the women should’ve been more cautious but there’s pretty much little you can do to
determine if someone is trustworthy or not.
Online dating is widely believed to be less effective than meeting in person for a couple
reasons. It’s more difficult to hide your feelings and emotions in person than online because
body language, facial expressions, and eye movements play largely into key with communication
in person. Observing a person’s body language can tell you a lot about what their thinking or
how they’re feeling. . In person you can hear, see and touch the person physically in front of you
which allows you to interact in ways you couldn’t online. So it seems weird that online dating is
still as popular as it is because being online hinders you from actual human interaction. Online
dating I has been looked at in a bad light for a long time. I think that online dating’s most recent
representation is the television series CatFish. Catfish is a show that a guy named Nev created in
order to help people with online relationships. CatFish, more often than not, suggests online
dating to be an activity that will lead to heartbreak and disappointment. On the show Nev goes to
the person who asks for help and researches their partner. Then by the end of the show, the guest
5
star and Nev go meet up with the guest star’s partner. Most of the time, the person that the guest
star thinks they are communicating with, isn’t the same person or has told a horrendous lie. The
guest star leaves embarrassed and heartbroken, and the show usually ends with the guest star
recovering from the event and no longer using online dating. This causes viewers to believe that
online dating should be avoided and that It will be nothing but trouble. So now people associate
online dating with being desperate for love or just foolish.
I also decided to research how online dating affects people of different sexual
orientations. Many gay and lesbian people use online dating because there are less gay people
than there are straight people. During the last decade or so, the increasing popularity of the
internet as a way to meet sex partners coincided with an increase in sexual risk-taking and HIV
incidence among men who have sex with men (MSM). A three-wave online prospective study
was conducted to first obtain a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of online chatting
among MSM in New South Wales. Some men fulfil their sexual desires online while engaging in
sexual fantasizing, while others use the internet to negotiate the type of sex they want to have in
real life. This study produced important and novel understandings of the ways in which online
chatting and fantasizing shape the sexual, risk and risk reduction strategies that men enact in real
life with partners they have met online. Findings have been used to produce recommendations
and possible strategies for innovative online HIV prevention that increase awareness among
MSM of the dynamics of online chatting and real life sexual behaviors and that support men to
better self-regulate their online chatting to prevent unplanned sexual risk-taking. These timely
understandings enabled the collaborating community organizations to develop innovative online
prevention strategies to address this major conduit to sexual risk-taking among MSM and to
contribute to a decrease in new HIV infections. I think that people online become infatuated with
6
the vision of the person that they’re talking to and forget to think about problems the person
might have like sexually transmitted diseases.
After finishing my research I came to the conclusion that you can’t really determine if
online dating is as effective as dating in person because humans don’t have the proper
information to determine this yet. I think that everyone would have to try online dating in order
to have a proper survey.
7
Work Cited Page
1. "5 Facts about Online Dating." Pew Research Center RSS. N.p., 20 Apr. 2015. Web.
01 Dec. 2015.
2. Albright, Dann. "How to Spot and Avoid an Online Dating Scammer." Makeuseof.
N.p., 6 Nov. 2015. Web. 15 Nov. 2015.
3. Adam, Philippe, John De Wit, and Dean Murphy. "Understanding the Contribution of
Online Dating to Sexual Risk-taking among Gay Men."UNSW. N.p., 25 Nov. 2015.
Web. 4 Dec. 2015.