COUPLES WHO MEET ON DATING APPS ARE LESS HAPPY IN THEIR MARRIAGES
What ever happened to meeting someone at a sleezy bar?
At least one in five new marriages can be traced back to a dating app, but researchers from Arizona State University say that a new study shows that online daters are less happy in their marriages.
There were almost 1,000 married couples in the study, about half who met online, and half who were introduced offline. They asked them questions to get a score for their marriage satisfaction and stability.
They didn’t release any specific numbers, but they did offer a few possible explanations for why this could be the case.
1. Couples who meet online are more likely in same-sex or interracial relationships, which means they can face more pressures from “societal marginalization”, and be less embraced by those around them.
2. Couples who meet online are more likely to have to overcome lingering stigmas from family and friends about online dating and apps.
3. Couples who met online are more likely to have to deal with being more remote, at least initially, than couples who met in person.
4. And there’s also the nature of online dating, which comes with a LOT more options, which can lead to people becoming overwhelmed, or just getting lost in messaging and stats and not focusing on chemistry together.
Despite all this, the researchers say online dating is not bad, and those relationships are not doomed.
They say the levels of satisfaction and stability they saw were “quite high” regardless of how couples met, and that couples who met through an app can improve their success rate just by being more aware of the unique challenges that online couples might face.
