Online Romance Dating in the Digital Age Girls

From heart emojis on Instagram to saying goodbye to a dating relationship with a text message, digital technology plays an important role in how teens seek out, maintain and end relationships. In a series of focus groups conducted by the Pew Research Center online and in cities across the U.S., over 100 teens shared with us their personal experiences with social media and romantic relationships. These are some of the key themes and responses we heard during these data-gathering sessions.

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Meeting a Significant Other Online

Some 35% of teens have some type of experience in a romantic relationship, a figure that includes current and former daters, as well as those in serious and less-serious relationships. Among teens with dating experience, 76% say they have never dated someone they first met online, but one-in-four (24%) have dated or hooked up with someone they initially encountered online.

It was relatively rare for teens in our focus groups to talk about meeting romantic partners online. Some teens explained that they would not trust someone they met online because of the likelihood of misrepresentation, while others were generally distrustful of all strangers online.

But despite this general wariness, some teens did describe meeting romantic partners online. These teens often mentioned social media as a platform for meeting potential partners.

How Teens Show Romantic Interest

During the focus groups, technology — and especially social media — often was described as an integral part of the courting process for teens. Half of all teens (50%) have let someone know they were interested in them romantically by friending them on Facebook or another social media site, and 47% have expressed their attraction by liking, commenting or otherwise interacting with that person on social media.

Teens also spoke about social media as an information-gathering tool that helps them find out all sorts of information about a potential partner, like whether they are dating someone or not.

Many teens in our focus groups described flirting with a crush by liking their photos or posting a comment on their social media profile. These interactions have their own unwritten — but widely understood — rules. Everything from one’s choice of emoji to the spelling of the word “hey” can carry a deeper meaning.

Text messaging also is a common way for teens to flirt and express romantic interest. But for all the advantages digital communication can offer, a number of teens in these focus groups said they are more at ease when talking to the object of their affection face to face.

How Teens Communicate in a Romantic Relationship

Text messaging and talking on the phone are the top two ways that teens spend time with their romantic partners — but when it comes to daily interactions, texting is by far the dominant way teens in romantic relationships communicate: 72% do so every day, compared with 39% of teens in romantic relationships who talk on the phone daily.

Some teens in our focus groups mentioned that their communication choices often evolve with the intensity and duration of their relationships. Others mentioned how text-based communication can help them overcome the shyness they sometimes experience in person or give them time to come up with the perfect response during conversation.

As mobile devices have made it easy to check in from a wide range of locations throughout the day, many teens now want to communicate with their romantic partner on a daily — and in some cases, hourly — basis. Indeed, 85% of teen daters expect to hear from their significant other at least once a day, and 11% expect to hear from them hourly. This issue came up frequently in our focus groups, as many teens expressed a desire (and in many cases, an expectation) that they hear from their significant other on a regular basis.

How Teens End Relationships

Digital communication plays a role in all aspects of teen romantic relationships, including when those relationships end. But even as text messaging and social media play a pronounced role in all other aspects of teen life, teens feel strongly that an in-person conversation — or at worst, a phone call — is the most socially acceptable way to break up with someone. Teens in our focus groups generally agreed that breaking up with a partner over text messaging or social media illustrates a lack of maturity on the part of the person who is ending the relationship.

But even though breaking up via text message is largely frowned upon, 27% of teens with dating experience admit to breaking up with someone by text. In our focus groups, we heard from teens who have broken up with someone via text. Some said that they used text messaging because they didn’t want to see their former partner hurt, while others wished to avoid facing anger or physical retaliation. Others said that they had never broken up with someone this way themselves, but have some sympathy for people who take this approach.

What Happens After a Breakup?

When relationships end, teens must decide how to cope with continuing exposure to their former partner on social media and other platforms. Sometimes this exposure involves old photos and other reminders of the past, and 43% of teen daters have untagged or deleted photos of themselves and a past partner on social media. Other times this exposure involves an actual link to their former partner, and 42% have unfriended or blocked someone they used to be in a relationship with on social media. Teens in our focus groups described the range of behaviors that they engage in on social media in the aftermath of a break-up.

Teens in our focus groups were somewhat divided on how best to deal with social media in the aftermath of a breakup. Some elect to delete all traces of their past relationship, while others prefer to maintain at least some connection. Ultimately, many teens agreed that this choice often depends on the nature of the relationship — the more serious the relationship, the less likely teens are to unfollow someone or remove all traces of their time together.

However, 63% of teen daters who use social media agree that social media allows people to support them when a relationship ends, and some teens in our focus groups said they received support on the platforms.