Mobile apps have revolutionized the way humans meet in Switzerland and other places in the past years. Unlike traditional dating websites, these applications do not highlight detailed user profiles, although largely based on rating pictures through a swipe review system.
EurekAlert reported, As dating apps increased in terms of popularity, so have some oppositions about them, boosting casual dating only, threatening the presence of long-term commitment, as well as the possibility of impairing the quality of intimacy.
There are no scientific proofs, though, verifying such claims. A research by the Switzerland-based University of Geneva or UNIGE offers a wealth of information on couples meeting through dating apps, collecting data from the 2018 Swiss survey.
The PLOS ONE journal published specifies that app-formed couples have stronger intentions of living together than pairs meeting in a non-digital setup.
Furthermore, women who found their partner via a dating app have stronger intentions and desires to have children than those who meet their partner offline.
Despite apprehensions about the deterioration of quality of relationships, couples meeting on dating wapps is expressing the same satisfaction level in terms of relationships, just like others.
Lastly, the research shows that such apps play a vital role in improving the couples' composition by allowing for more educationally different and geographically distant pairs.
The New Dating Technologies
The meteoric increase of romantic meetups online is on its way to becoming a top place where pairs are formed in Switzerland, on a par with meeting through friends.
According to the Institute of Demography and Socioeconomics in UNIGE's Faculty of Social Sciences researcher, Gina Potarca, an Ambizione research grant awardee of the Swiss National Science Foundation, "the Internet is noticeably transforming the dynamics of the manner people are meeting.
Potarca's study, which the foundation granted, was on the impacts of digital ways of "communicating on marriage formation and sorting."
It offers an unavoidable abundance of meeting opportunities, not to mention engages minimal initiative and no intervention from the third party.
The new dating technologies comprise smartphone apps such as Tinder or Grindr, where users can choose partners by swiping on and browsing pictures.
Though the said mobile apps have raised concerns that large portions of media are claiming they have an adverse effect on the relationship quality, they render people unable to invest in a long-term or exclusive relationship. Until now, nonetheless, Potara continued, there has been no evidence proving this is the case.
Diversified Socio-Educational Profiles
This research underscores the final aspect - dating apps entice mixing different education levels, specifically between high-educated females and lower educated males.
Partners with more diversified socio-educational profiles, the study authors said, may have to do with choosing approaches focusing primarily on the visual.
Since users of the app can connect with couples in their immediate region but in other spaces too, as they move around, the apps are making it easier for people to meet people with a 30-minute interval, leading to a rise in long-distance relationships.
Knowing that dating apps have likely turned even more famous during the 2020 lockdown and social distancing, it is reassuring to terminate alarming apprehensions about the long-term impacts of using such tools, Potarca concludes.
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