Most people don’t enjoy being single, apparently. If they did, would there be such a proliferation of online dating sites? Businesses boom when they answer a need, and the need for love is one that never seems to end.
The Internet has taken what was once the personals section of the newspaper and made it global and interactive. As soon as the Internet became a pervasive social influence in the early 1990s, online romance quickly blossomed. The most popular dating site, Match.com, went online in 1995 and quickly became wildly popular. Today it boasts an incredible 50 million users in 25 countries. It’s not the only online site, either. A quick search finds about 800 sites in the U.S. alone. Meeting a need – yes, indeed.
Still, going online to meet a soul mate isn’t always an easy deal, though plenty of people have found love and romance there. Granted, the Internet increases the pool of potential partners, but there are also disadvantages.
For some people, just the amount of choices can be daunting. In the “real” world, does anyone have so many available singles to choose from? There’s a sense of unreality involved that can present real problems.
The sense of unreality of course extends to the way many people present themselves online. Singles are asked to post “recent” pictures and to write a personal profile about themselves. Potential suitors must hope that the gorgeous Mensa member on the site isn’t actually twenty years older and fifty pounds heavier than their picture.
The reality is that many singles’ site users play dating Russian roulette, thinking they’ve fallen in love with a certain kind of person over email, only to discover when they meet in person that they’ve fallen in love with an Internet fantasy figure. Yet the search for love continues…as Match.com signs up another million users.