What A Stanford Sociologist Has Learned From Years Of Studying Online Dating

"There are a lot of theories out there about how online dating is bad for us," Michael Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Stanford who has been conducting a long-running study of online dating, told The Washington Post. "And mostly they're pretty unfounded."

From its earliest days, online dating has faced harsh criticism. Some doubted its efficacy. Others accused it of being a last-ditch effort of the desperate. These days we’ve moved on from those denunciations, but online dating is still not without its detractors. In 2016 critics are more likely to say it encourages promiscuity or has contributed to the spread of STDs.

But what if they’ve been wrong all along?

Rosenfeld, who has followed the dating lives of more than 3,000 people during his career, has gleaned many insights about our new, tech-savvy approach to pairing off. Roberto A. Ferdman spoke with Rosenfeld about his research for The Washington Post. Below are a few highlights from the interview:

• On how online dating has changed the way we date: “The rise of phone apps and online dating websites gives people access to more potential partners than they could meet at work or in the neighborhood. It makes it easier for someone who is looking for something very specific in a partner to find what they are looking for.”
• On skepticism: “The worry about online dating comes from theories about how too much choice might be bad for you. The idea is that if you’re faced with too many options you will find it harder to pick one, that too much choice is demotivating.”
• On the skepticism’s validity: “I actually don’t see in my data any negative repercussions for people who meet partners online…. There’s no obvious pattern by which people who meet online are worse off. And, conversely, online dating has real benefits.”
• On marriage: “One of the things I have found out as part of my research is that people who meet online actually progress to marriage faster than people who meet offline…. I think that’s because online you do this big, calculated search for your soul mate, and find someone else who agrees and then transition to marriage much more quickly.”

Not only has Rosenfeld’s research led him to believe that criticisms of online dating are largely unfounded, he also believes that online dating has had beneficial effects.

“The need for love, romance, relationships and sex — these are pretty basic human needs,” he says. “And the ability to match people who would have otherwise not found each other is a powerful outcome of the new technology.” In other words, online dating has opened up new pathways to love and happiness for millions of people around the world - and it's hard to find fault with that.

Read the full interview at The Washington Post.