‘Everybody’s Doing It’: Examining The Impacts of Online Dating Jo Barraket and Millsom Henry-Waring Political Science, University of Melbourne; Sociology, University of Melbourne [email protected]; [email protected] Abstract: Since the early 1990s, the rapid advancement of information and communication technologies has had significant impacts on both public and private spheres in advanced post-industrial societies. Within this context, there is an increasing trend towards the use of online technologies to establish and maintain interpersonal relationships. One such example is the growing trend of ‘online dating’. This paper reviews the existing literature on online technologies and intimate connections – with a specific focus on online dating – in order to consider the sociological trends informing people’s use of online technologies to form intimate connections; the types of dating activity or relationships facilitated by the use of these technologies; and whether such technologies are transforming the nature of interactions which lead to the formation of intimate relationships. Introduction Since the early 1990s, the rapid advancement of information and communication technologies has had significant sociological impacts on both public and private spheres in advanced post-industrial societies. Within this context, there is an increasing trend towards the use of communications technologies for establishing and maintaining interpersonal relationships. One such example is the growing use of online technologies – including the Internet, email and the World Wide Web - for the purposes of ‘online dating’.

Online dating may be described as a deliberative form of meeting new people mediated by Internet sites designed specifically for this purpose. Generally, online dating sites provide users with opportunities to present personalized profiles of themselves, review

2 the profiles of others, send expressions of interest to other users, and facilitate synchronous (for example, instant messaging) and asynchronous (for example, email) communication between users in order to facilitate face to face meetings. Online dating may be loosely compared with more traditional deliberative dating techniques that are mediated by a commercial interest, such as print based personal advertising and matchmaking services.

In 2003 in the US, 40 million unique users utilized websites dedicated to ‘deliberative’ dating (Fiore & Donath, 2004: 1). Preliminary research suggests that nearly a million Australians are utilizing formal online dating services, and there are more than 60 major commercial online dating sites serving Australian people. To date, however, there has been very little research into the sociological impacts of online technologies on the formation of intimate relationships. While we recognize that intimacy itself takes many forms – for example, intimacy between parent and child– we use the term ‘intimacy’ in this paper to describe romantic and/or sexual relations between adults, ranging from oneoff interactions to sustained relationships.

This paper reviews the existing literature on online technologies and intimacy in order to introduce some broad conceptual questions about the role of sociology in understanding the online dating phenomenon. These questions form the basis of further theoretical and empirical inquiry currently being conducted by the authors. In this paper, we are specifically concerned with online interactions that lead to offline involvement and are characterized by ‘one to one’ contact between adults.

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Exploring the Literature on Online Intimacy and Social Connectivity

To date, sociological literature exploring online interactions has tended to focus on the construction of individual identities and bodies online (see Henry Waring & Barraket, 2004 for further discussion). There is a growing body of psychological literature which is specifically concerned with the psycho-social attributes of people who form relationships online (Baker, 2002; Bonebrake, 2002; Fischer et al, 2001; McKenna et al, 2002; McCown et al, 2001), the nature of online sexual behaviour and sexual addiction (BraunHarvey, 2003; Carnes, 2001), and the extent to which relationships mediated by online technologies challenge traditional theories of relationship formation and attraction (Levin, 2000; Wildermuth, 2001; Lea & Spears, 1995) . However, nearly all of these studies focus on relationship formation through ‘accidental’ or ‘secondary’ online contact – through chat rooms, discussion lists and so on – rather than the ‘deliberative’ use of online technologies to form intimate offline relationships. This reflects a broader limitation of social science research on computer mediated communication, where the study of relationship formation has largely focused on online relationships only, with little attention paid to relationships that develop online and result in offline connection (Parks & Roberts, 1998).

The broad literature on the relational aspects of online technologies suggests a number of sociological questions about the relationship between online technologies and patterns of social interactivity, which have specific implications for understanding the patterns and

4 effects of online dating. In the remaining sections of this paper, we will consider the available literature in response to the following three questions:

1. What are the broad sociological trends that inform people’s use of online technologies to form intimate relationships? 2. What types of dating activity or relationships are mediated by the use of these technologies, and do these differ from other forms of relationship building in particular ways? 3. Do online dating technologies transform the nature of intimacy itself?

What are the broad sociological trends informing people’s use of online technologies to form intimate connections?

The limited empirical literature that has explicitly explored online dating and romance leading to offline involvement in Canadian, UK, and US contexts (see Brym & Lenton, 2001; Hardey, 2002; Albright & Conran; no date, respectively) identifies several social trends impacting on the growth in online dating activity. These include:

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A growing proportion of the population is single (although, as these writers acknowledge, being single is not a precondition for online dating);

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Growing pressures of career are reducing opportunities for social activity and meeting new people;

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The increasing mobility of single people in response to labour market demands reduces opportunities to sustain intimate relationships; and

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The workplace as a site of forming romantic or sexual relationships has been reduced due to growing sensitivity about sexual harassment.

Our literature review revealed no similar studies of online dating patterns in the Australian context. However, the trends in single person households and the proportionate increase of single adults within the population identified in these studies are also true of Australia, suggesting that these findings have some resonance here.

As both Brym & Lenton (2001) and Hardey (2002) point out, regular Internet users are generally well-educated and strong income earners relative to the broader population, and more highly concentrated in areas of professional employment. It is interesting to note, however, that neither of these online dating studies established how long their participants had been using the Internet, nor whether ‘Internet savvy’ had any perceived impacts on the quality or nature of online dating interaction. Given that early adoption of technology and technological literacy have been key predictors of online technology use for a range of applications, from online shopping through to social movement formation (Barraket, 2002), it is significant that the technological literacy of Internet dating users has not been explored.

What types of dating activity or relationships are mediated by the use of these technologies, and do they differ from other forms of relationship building in particular ways?

One of the most commonly cited transformative possibilities of online technologies is their capacity to overcome the tyranny of distance, time and space to facilitate the

6 establishment of new networks and interactions (see Castells, 2001). In the context of personal relationship formation, some psychological studies (Levin, 2000; Wildermuth, 2001) have suggested that relationships formed and maintained online challenge traditional relationship theory, because physical proximity is de-emphasised as a feature of significance in the relationship formation process. However, the few studies that have examined the development of online personal relationships leading to offline involvement (Hardey, 2002; Brym & Lenton, 2001; McCown et al, 2001; Parks & Roberts, 1998; Albright & Conran, no date) indicate that physical proximity remains a significant consideration for people forming face-to-face relationships that are partly mediated by online technologies.

What is perhaps more significant about the mediating effects of online technologies is the extent to which they provide new sites of social interactivity in which users meet people with whom they would otherwise not come in contact. In this sense, proximity is not simply a matter of distance, but of access to diverse networks. As Fiore and Donath (2004) have pointed out, the majority of online dating sites are explicitly constructed to provide users with opportunities to connect with people outside their existing networks.

While online technologies appear to provide opportunities for new connections, they are also being employed to reinforce traditional relationship formation within particular subcultural, ethno-religious and sexual identity groups (Fiore & Donath, 2004; Van Acker, 2001). In a review of US online personal sites, Fiore and Donath (2004) have identified the emergence of a range of ‘subpopulation’ online dating systems that are

7 specifically tailored to foster new connections amongst people within targeted populations, such as the Jewish community, gay men, and even users who identify as being particularly physically attractive. Mainstream online dating sites, such as the Australian site, RSVP, incorporate population specific information about users’ religious beliefs, political orientation, type of employment and so on, which constitute what Fiore and Donath describe as: tremendously powerful tools for identifying people who match [our common] traits (2004: 1).

It is important to note that online dating is not simply mediated by the technology, but by the designers of that technology and the market interests they represent. An inherent design tension in a commercially driven online dating site is that between the conflicting goals of supporting users to meet partners and form successful relationships versus supporting the growth of the site by retaining users (Fiore & Donath, 2004). To a degree, this may reflect an inherent tension of any form of relationship building – including more traditional forms such as matchmaking and print based personals – that is mediated by commercial interests. However, the level of interactivity and ‘self-administration’ inherent to the use of online technologies means that most online dating sites provide users with a significantly greater level of transparency about the levels and types of use by others than more traditional commercial dating services, suggesting a greater level of perceived agency for participants in this form of deliberative dating activity. At the same time, as Van Acker (2001) has pointed out, the traditional conventions and expectations of intimacy are reproduced in online discourses, with many Internet dating sites

8 promoting traditional ideals of romance through dating tips and site functions designed to ‘help’ users find ‘the one’, their ‘perfect match’ and so on.

The available literature suggests that online dating services are simultaneously providing opportunities for people to form intimate connections that cut across traditional social and spatial networks, while also facilitating more traditional patterns of relationship formation within specific groups. This infers that online technologies are simultaneously mediating new patterns of interactivity and reinforcing existing socio-cultural norms in the formation, erosion and reformation of intimate relationships.

Do online dating technologies transform the nature of intimacy itself? In a theoretical analysis of emotions and the Internet, Ben Ze’ev (2004) has suggested that the privileging of imagination is what defines cyberspace as a unique social space, and its seductiveness as a site of social interaction rests in its features of imagination, interactivity, availability and anonymity. We would argue that this presents a rather unitary understanding of cyberspace, which presumes that it is both clearly distinct from ‘real life’, and a site of relatively homogenous patterns of interaction. As Parks and Roberts (1998) have observed, online technologies give rise to a range of distinct social settings – such as newsgroups, MUDS (or multi-user dimensions), MOOs (or multi-user dimensions, object oriented) and online dating sites – which inscribe different relational dynamics both structurally, through the varying combinations of technological functions available for use in particular settings, and normatively, through different online ‘ettiquettes’ associated with diverse online interactions.

9 The limited empirical literature that concerns itself with personal relationships formed online and leading to face to face interaction suggests that the use of online technologies for this purpose gives rise to new norms of interaction, while also inscribing traditional normative behaviours. For example, higher levels of personal control over the pace and nature of electronically mediated communication has been identified as a distinguishing feature of online relationship formation (Van Acker, 2001; Ben Ze’ev, 2004; Hardey, 2002; McCown et al 2001), which produces new norms of interaction. As Hardey’s (2002) study found, withdrawal without explanation from email exchange is common amongst online daters, and is neither considered rude nor inappropriate in this context. Online dating also appears to have generated a range of widely shared norms, such as the order and pace of email interaction, reciprocity in sharing personal information and so on, that reflect the nature and functionality of the technologies that support this form of interaction, while also mirroring protocols of face to face interaction (Hardey, 2002). As Van Acker (2001: 108) points out, cyberspace simultaneously challenges traditional ways of meeting people while also reproducing real world scenarios.

As several writers have noted (Parks and Roberts, 1998; Hardey, 2002; Van Acker, 2001; McCown et al, 2001), understandings of the socially transformative effects of online technologies have thus far been limited by a concentration on interpersonal interactions that occur solely online. This has given rise to a particular emphasis on the liberating and destructive effects of anonymity and unbounded identity on interpersonal relations in cyberspace. The empirical research on online dating specifically is inconclusive on this issue. In their study of Canadian users of online dating services, Brym and Lenton (2001)

10 found that the main disadvantage of online dating perceived by research participants was that sometimes people misrepresent themselves online, and that one quarter of participants acknowledged that they have misrepresented themselves online at some point in their experience of online dating. In a study of university students’ use of the Internet to form romantic relationships, Donn and Sherman (2002) reported that the majority of respondents expressed concern about misrepresentation online. Studies conducted by Fischer et al (2001) and Hardey (2002) contradict these findings. Hardey’s UK study reports that the potential for face to face meeting curtails people’s tendencies towards misrepresentation and concludes that, in this context “…the self may be articulated and explored but is unlikely to be transcended or reconstructed into any number of virtual selves.” (2002). This observation reinforces Parks and Roberts’ (1998) assertion that understandings of the transformative effects of online technologies on patterns of identity and relationship formation remain extremely limited where we view cyberspace as a pure and distinct site of interaction.

Conclusions In this paper, we have briefly identified and considered some of the sociological questions raised by the increasing use of online technologies for the deliberative purpose of intimate face-to-face relationship formation. The available literature indicates that online dating trends are both shaped by and situated within broader socio-cultural trends relating to work, household, and mobility patterns in so called advanced western societies. This suggests that better developed theoretical and empirical understandings of the use of online technologies for the purposes of relationship formation are required if we are to understand the nature of intimacy in the post-industrial age.

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This paper also illuminates the simultaneously transformative and conservative effects of online technology use on inscribed cultural practices associated with the initiation and development of intimacy between adults. We have suggested that online dating activities produce new norms and opportunities for interaction, while at the same time reinforcing traditional norms and networks in which intimacy occurs. The relative paucity of literature on this topic, and the contradictions in empirical findings to date, suggests a need for significantly greater theoretical and empirical inquiry if we are to truly understand the sociological effects of online technologies at the interface between ‘the virtual’ and ‘the real’.

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