Dating sites have led to stronger marriages and more intercultural mixing

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The first dating sites appeared in the 1990s, changing the structure and foundations of society since then. Today, more than a third of all marriages begin with online dating.

As a rule, people used to meet their soul mate among their closest acquaintances, through friends, relatives or colleagues. Dating sites have changed this tradition by giving us the chance to meet someone from every corner of the planet.

Today, the Internet is the second most popular way of dating among heterosexual couples and the first among same-sex couples.

The graph clearly shows how the Internet has influenced the lives of modern generations.

The emergence of this way of acquaintance has led to significant changes in society. People who meet each other online often don't know each other at all. As a result, previously non-existent social ties appear.

Research by Scientists in Online Dating

Scientists Josue Ortega of the University of Essex and Philipp Hergovich of the University of Vienna are investigating how this has affected racial diversity in society. “We are faced with an important task - to understand the process of the emergence of international marriages, since they act as a measure of social distance between different groups of people,” Ortega and Ergovic say.

They constructed a model of a society in which men and women of different nationalities could only choose a mate from among those with whom they have a connection. Such a society is characterized by a low level of inter-ethnic marriages. However, another model, in which scientists established connections between people from different ethnic groups, showed that the rate of international marriages increased dramatically.

“Our model predicts almost complete racial integration due to the emergence of dating sites, even if a person has met not many potential partners thanks to them,” the scientists say. The model also proves that online dating is much stronger, they said.

Couples who met online have a lower divorce rate than couples who met in a traditional way.

The researchers then compared the results of studies of their models of society with the observed growth rates of international marriages in the United States. In some parts of the country, mixing of nationalities was prohibited until 1967. However, with the emergence of dating sites in 1995 such as Match.com, the number of interracial marriages increased significantly.

The growth rate accelerated even more in the 2000s, when online dating began to gain immense popularity. The next leap took place in 2014. Most likely, this was influenced by the emergence of the popular online dating application Tinder, which is used by more than 50 million people and thanks to which there are more than 12 million acquaintances a day.

Thus, scientists have come to the conclusion that online dating has become the main factor in the increase in the number of international marriages.