What you got by making friends in online

Psychology Research on online friends

What Do You Really Know About Meeting People Online?

The rise of any new technology incites a rash of fears, myths, and truisms that are not so true. With regard to the coming of the internet age, the implications for our interpersonal lives are among our greatest concerns.

The most definitive study to date on the use of the internet to find a mate has just been published. As readers of this blog know, dating/mating is my least favorite topic and I usually try to avoid it. I don’t like to feed the stereotype that single people care more about becoming unsingle than anything else.

In this instance, I’m making an exception because the results of the research may have implications for all of the relationships we find on the internet, and not just romantic ones.

Here are a few of the questions addressed by the sociologists Michael Rosenfeld and Reuben Thomas in their research. Guess the answers first, if you’d like, then look for the actual findings below.

Can you answer these questions?

1. We have all heard stories of couples who introduced themselves to each other, often on the internet, without getting “set up” by anyone in their real lives. But are they the exceptions? Do most partners still come together because someone they knew introduced them?
2. When people use the internet to become romantic partners, are they usually just reconnecting with people they already knew?
3. Sure, people meet potential mates online. But are those relationships as sturdy and as high-quality as relationships that developed from face-to-face interactions?
4. Among heterosexuals, are young people – with all of their technological savvy – the age group most likely to meet their romantic partners online?

 Here’s what the research found:

1.      The table below shows the various ways people met their romantic partners in 1992 (before household internet access was commonplace) and in 2009. In 2009, adults were much less likely than they were in 1992 to have been introduced to their mate by friends or family members or classmates. They (or their partner) were much more likely to have taken the initiative themselves, without any introductions. Still, even in 2009, fewer than half of all couples introduced themselves.

Who introduced you to your partner?

1992     2009

40%     31%     Friends

16%     10%     Family

7%       1%     Classmates

6%       7%     Co-workers

<1%       1%     Neighbours’

32%     42%     you or partner introduced yourselves

 2.      The answer to this is no. As the figures below show, nearly three-quarters of the couples who met on the internet were perfect strangers.

If you did meet your partner online, did you already know him or her?

74%     No, we were strangers

14%     Friends or family introduced us online

9%     Yes, we already knew each other previously and reunited online

Are you wondering how a friend or family member can introduce you to someone online? The authors explain:

“Typical stories of mediated Internet meetings include friends forwarding links to promising online profiles, or respondents whose friends sat them down in front of a computer with a chat window already opened.”

3. This one is a “yes.”  There is little difference in the quality of the relationships formed online than those formed in person. Also, online relationships are not more likely to break up within a year than are relationships formed offline.

4. The answer to this one is no. Young people are around other potential partners quite often. They don’t need to rely on the internet to find someone.

If you got all or almost all answers right, feel free to brag!

Now I’d like to see some of the same kinds of questions asked of people who became close platonic friends.

Image Source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1287373

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