This Is How Online Dating Has Changed The Way We Love, According To Science

By now you've probably read – or at least heard about – Vanity Fair's recent takedown of online dating. The lengthy article is essentially an obituary for traditional courtship, which writer Nancy Jo Sales says is long gone thanks to online dating sites and mobile apps.

Tinder responded with a very public Twitter meltdown and tongues have been wagging about the state of modern dating ever since. Some agree with Sales, while others believe it's simply moral panic and anyone who hasn't jumped on the Tinder train is probably just too old to understand it.

The good news is, a growing body of scientific research is dedicated to online dating and the social change that comes along with it. The bad news is, even the scientists can't seem to agree with each other.

A 2012 study called “Searching for a Mate: The Rise of the Internet as a Social Intermediary” found no difference in relationship quality or strength between couples who met online and couples who met off. It also suggested that marriage and partnership rates may increase, as people with smaller pools of potential mates use dating services to cast wider nets.

Another 2012 study, headed up by Eli Finkel, concluded that most matching algorithms don't work. However, it also noted that “Online dating offers access to potential partners whom people would be unlikely to meet through other avenues, and this access yields new romantic possibilities.”

A 2013 study on marital satisfaction and breakups deemed online dating an unequivocally good thing. The research was sponsored by eHarmony, which rightfully has given some readers pause, but was reviewed by independent statisticians prior to publication.

A second study from 2013 examined sexual behavior and the “hookup culture” supposedly propagated by apps like Tinder. After examining a nationally representative sample of more than 1,800 18- to 25-year-olds, the study concluded that today's youth aren't substantially more promiscuous than previous generations. In fact, they may actually be having less sex than their predecessors.

Things got weird in 2014. Using the same data from 2012's “Searching for a Mate” study, a Ph.D. candidate at Michigan State came to the opposite conclusion about online dating and relationship quality. According to her findings, online daters are more likely to date than marry, more likely to break up faster, and more likely to break up more often.

How could two studies using the same statistics arrive at such different conclusions?

The answer is something we've always known: love is messy, contradictory, and confusing. Try quantifying that and you're bound to be disappointed.