Is Online Dating Bad for Our Mental Health?
Finding a date online may be quick and convenient, but might come with unintended side-effects
The rise of online dating
We’ve all seen those cheesy eHarmony commercials where two strangers find each other on their platform and fall in love. Despite its cheesiness, many of us now turn to online dating platforms like eHarmony, Tinder, Hinge, etc. in the hopes of telling our own cheesy stories about how we found “the one”.
Unfortunately, it’s just not that easy.
The dating world has changed significantly in the past couple of decades. According to Wikipedia’s online dating services timeline, the idea of matching strangers based on questionnaires that are run through computer algorithms has been around since the 1960s, but modern online dating services like Match.com didn’t launch until the late ‘90s.
After these more sophisticated dating platforms were launched, there was an explosion in couples meeting online from about 7 percent in the early 2000s to now nearly 20 percent. Incredibly, more couples are meeting online than any other means, including through a friend.
However, as online dating continues to rise in popularity, it’s worth taking a minute to stop and…
