A Global Shift in the Social Relationships of Networked Individuals: Meeting and Dating Online Comes of Age
Link[PLACEHOLDER: Technical report on the global rise of online dating and its impact on relationship formation.]
Appears in themes
Cross-national survey of 17 countries reveals online dating as complement rather than substitute for offline meeting, with adoption highest among those over 40 re-entering the dating market. Platforms mediate who meets whom at scale, reconfiguring the opportunity structures for intimate relationship formation in ways that vary by age, gender, and cultural context.
Cross-national data on online dating reveals that platforms don't merely facilitate existing relationship-seeking patterns but restructure who can know whom. The finding that online dating complements rather than substitutes for offline meeting challenges the binary framing of "online vs. offline" and reveals a more networked epistemology of intimacy.