Dating Online: What Critical Thinking Reveals About the Pros and Cons

Not long ago, meeting a partner online was regarded with suspicion, as a last resort for the lonely or the desperate. Today it is the most common way that couples meet in many countries. A study by the sociologist Michael Rosenfeld and his colleagues at Stanford University found that by 2017 around thirty nine per cent of heterosexual couples in the United States had met online, far more than had met through friends, at work or in a bar. Few social changes have happened so quickly or touched so many lives. This article applies the tools of critical thinking to online dating and asks a question that is easy to avoid: is it helping us to find love, or changing what we think love is?

The advantages are real and should not be dismissed. Online dating has widened the pool of potential partners far beyond the limits of a village, a workplace or a social circle. It has been particularly valuable for people whose options were once restricted: those living in rural areas, those who work unusual hours, those who are shy, and members of minority communities who might otherwise struggle to meet one another. It allows people to state their intentions clearly, to filter for shared values and to begin a conversation without the pressure of a crowded room. For many couples who are now happily married, the app was simply the door through which they first walked.

Yet critical thinking requires us to look beyond the success stories, which are, after all, the ones we are most likely to hear about. The first issue to examine is the problem of choice. The psychologist Barry Schwartz has argued that, beyond a certain point, more options make us less satisfied rather than more. In a famous experiment, shoppers offered twenty four varieties of jam were far less likely to buy any than those offered six. A dating app may present hundreds or thousands of profiles. When the next option is always only a swipe away, it can become difficult to commit to the person in front of us, and easy to wonder whether someone slightly better is waiting just beyond the screen.

The second issue is the way that profiles shape our judgement. A profile is a highly edited version of a person: a handful of flattering photographs, a few carefully chosen sentences and a list of interests. Research on first impressions shows that we form judgements about attractiveness and trustworthiness within a fraction of a second, and the halo effect leads us to assume that an attractive person also possesses other positive qualities. Online, these quick judgements are made at enormous speed and in enormous numbers. Qualities that matter deeply in a long relationship, such as kindness, patience, humour and reliability, are almost impossible to see in a photograph.

The third issue is the design of the apps themselves. Many dating platforms are free to use and earn their income through subscriptions, advertising and paid features. It is worth asking, with a critical eye, whether a business that profits from continued use has an incentive for its customers to find a partner quickly and leave. Features such as swiping, matching notifications and the steady arrival of new profiles share some of the mechanisms of games, offering small and unpredictable rewards that keep us returning. This does not mean that the companies act in bad faith, but it does mean that the user should remember that the app is not a neutral matchmaker.

The fourth issue is safety. Romance fraud has become a serious problem, with criminals creating false identities in order to build trust over weeks or months before asking for money. In the United Kingdom, police and banks regularly warn that victims lose large sums every year, and that many are too embarrassed to report what has happened. Critical thinking offers practical protection here. A person who refuses to meet in person, who always has an excuse to avoid a video call, or whose story contains small inconsistencies, deserves careful scrutiny, however charming their messages may be.

There is also a subtler question about what online dating does to our expectations. When we search for a partner using filters for height, age, education and interests, we may begin to treat people as products to be compared, rather than as complex human beings to be discovered. Many long and happy relationships began with someone who would never have passed the filters that either person might have set. Love has a way of surprising us, and a system built on stated preferences may leave less room for surprise.

None of this means that online dating is harmful or that those who use it are naive. It means that, like any powerful tool, it works best when used deliberately. A few principles may help. Limit the time spent swiping, and treat it as a way of arranging meetings rather than as entertainment. Move from messaging to meeting reasonably soon, in a safe public place, because a conversation in person reveals far more than weeks of text. Pay attention to how someone treats you and others, rather than to how impressive their profile appears. And be honest in your own profile, since a relationship that begins with an edited version of yourself will eventually have to meet the real one.

It is also worth remembering that the traditional ways of meeting have not disappeared. Friendships, shared interests, volunteering, clubs and communities still bring people together in ways that allow character to be seen gradually and in context. Online dating can sit alongside these, but it need not replace them.

So what can we conclude? Online dating is neither a romantic revolution nor a social disaster. It has opened doors for millions of people and closed none that they were not free to keep open. Its weaknesses lie in the abundance of choice, the speed of judgement, the commercial design of the platforms and the risk of deception. Each of these can be managed by a user who thinks clearly about what they are doing and why. The technology is a means of introduction; it cannot do the work of knowing another person, which still requires time, attention and honesty.

Perhaps the most valuable questions are the ones we ask ourselves. When you look at a profile, what are you really looking for, and where did those preferences come from? Are you searching for a person, or for a list of qualities? If the right partner arrived without any of the features on your list, would you recognise them? And in a world that offers endless options, what would it mean to choose one person, and keep choosing them?