With the Covid crisis ending New Year’s Eve celebrations and many other opportunities to pursue romance in person, dating apps have thrived.
But while this technology is associated with connections, one study suggests that those who get married after sliding to the right have a relationship as satisfying as those who met through traditional dating – and may even be more eager to settle down.
“In fact, we found that in some ways, couples who met through dating apps have a long-term family background or even stronger relationship intentions than other couples who met offline or by other digital ways of meeting ”Said Dr. Gina Potarca, author of the research at the University of Geneva.
Writing in PLOS One magazine, Potarca analyzed the results of the 2018 nationally representative survey of families and generations of 2018, conducted by the Swiss federal statistics office, which questioned 15- to 79-year-olds on a range of issues, including where the couples met and your intentions in that relationship.
Potarca focused on a sample of 3,245 partners over the age of 18 and whose relationship was no more than 10 years old, finding that while most individuals reported meeting their partner offline, 104 met their partner through dating apps, 264 met them through dating sites and 125 found their partner through other online services.
The proportion of people who know their partners through dating apps has increased dramatically over time.
But analysis of responses to questions about relationship intentions revealed that there was little difference when it came to marital intentions and the desire or intention to have children between those who met through apps and those who met offline. In addition, there was little difference in relationship and satisfaction with life.
In fact, those who met their partners through an app were more likely to be planning to move in with them if they were no longer cohabiting, even when factors such as age were taken into account. In addition, women who met their partners through an app were more likely to want a child in the next three years than those who met their partners offline.
The study also found that dating apps were linked to couples forming over greater geographical distances and women with a high level of education forming pairs with less educated men – the latter, said Potarca, may be because app matches are based more in appearance and may be less influenced by social stigma.
Potarca said the study resisted fears that dating apps threaten long-term relationships. “These moral panics generally don’t reflect the real trends that are happening,” she said.
However, the study is based only on respondents in Switzerland, and some of the questions were directed only at people in heterosexual relationships. In addition, the number of people who met their partners on a dating app was relatively small, although it is difficult to separate cause and effect, as the study is based only on observations.
Dr. Kathryn Coduto, an assistant professor of communication and media studies at South Dakota State University and an expert in dating apps who was not involved in the work, added that there may be prejudices in who is responding to the survey and how. But she said the results coincide with smaller studies that suggest that dating apps are not leading to a “dating apocalypse”.
Coduto added that while some may be surprised by discoveries about dating app users who want to cohabit earlier and possibly want children, many people download apps in search of long-term relationships.
“In fact, if that’s your motivation when you download the app and find someone with those same goals, you’re probably ready to start early,” she said.
Coduto said it would be interesting to take a closer look at non-heterosexual relationships and how many partners individuals had through dating apps before meeting their current partner.
“It is easy to read this study and think that all these people went online, arranged with their partners and were ready to have children or at least live together,” she said. “My guess is that it was a lot more work than that, so it would be useful to know how that process went.”