An often-asked question is whether online dating really is a good way to find a partner, given we are initially dating a stranger or someone with whom we have had limited contact. Can we have a long-lasting sustainable relationship with someone we have met online?
Some ten years ago, John Cacioppo and his colleagues (Cacioppo, Cacioppo, Gonzaga, Ogburn, and VanderWeele, 2013) suggested that more satisfying marriages and marriages that did not end prematurely were more likely to have been initiated via online dating. Indeed, one advantage of online dating is that it does offer its users a large amount of choice, the extent to which might never exist through face-to-face dating.
However, online dating has changed radically since Cacioppo’s research in 2013, with the emergence of faster-paced dating apps where users now simply swipe a phone screen to select a potential date. Furthermore, people’s motivations for using online dating have changed, with casual sex or just seeking validation being cited as reasons (Timmermans and De Caluwé, 2017). Arguably, this has changed the current dating landscape, resulting in daters perhaps making less prudent partner choices compared to 10 years ago.
The effects of social media on relationships
Relationships that begin face-to-face through social or work connections, often include a network of mutual friends, who are important in supporting relationships. However, those who meet through online dating are unlikely to have such a support structure, people are essentially strangers before they meet. Therefore, if such a face-to-face friendship network is unavailable, then relationship talk on social media may compensate for the absence of a face-to-face support network. We know that the last ten years have witnessed changes in the way and the extent to which people use messaging and social media. Furthermore, there is evidence that people are far more candid online and share more information than they might face-to-face.
How are the changes in online dating and online communication affecting relationships? To investigate these questions, a recent study by Junwen Hu and colleagues tested firstly whether where people meet (face-to-face or online) can influence relationship success, and secondly whether relationship talk on social media influences people’s reports of their relationship success (Hu, Zhu, and Zhang, 2024).
The researchers recorded whether the participants in their study had met online, whether they had met face-to-face, and whether they were in a marital relationship or a non-marital relationship. Those who were married may have had different relationship motivations compared to those in non-marital relationships. In addition, they recorded relationship success with items such as “Overall, would you say that things in your relationship are going. . .?” Participants responded on a four-point scale from very well to not at all well. Finally, to measure relationship talk on social media the researchers asked participants whether they had used social media to share details of their relationship, to which they could respond that they had not done this to have done this.
Relationship success and where people meet
First, the researchers found that those in marital relationships who had met their partner through online dating reported lower levels of relationship success compared with those who had met their partner face-to-face, although the difference was small. Yet for those in non-marital relationships, relationship success was unrelated to whether they had met online or face-to-face. The researchers speculate that differences in relationship success scores between married or not married couples may be down to differences in participants’ criteria or expectations for relationship success between the two groups. Possibly those in non-marital relationships had lower expectations as to what they expected from a relationship compared to those who were married.
Relationship talk on social media
The researchers next examined the second issue, which was the function of relationship talk on social media in providing a degree of social support in relationships. More specifically they looked at the effect of this talk on relationship success according to where people had met (online or face-to-face). They predicted that chatting on social media would aid participants in gaining social support for their relationships. More specifically, it may be that relationship talk on social media may compensate for the negative effect of the absence of offline social support networks on the success of marital relationships.
They found that in marital relationships, relationship talk on social media, had little or no effect on relationship success for those who had met face-to-face. Whereas, for those who had met online, such talk had the effect of increasing reported relationship success.
In non-marital relationships, for those who met face-to-face, there was no real difference in reported relationship success between those who engaged in relationship talk on social media and those who didn’t. However, for those who met online, those who had engaged in such talk reported slightly greater relationship success compared to those who did not engage in this.
Overall, in both marital and non-marital relationships, relationship talk on social media increased reported relationship success for those who had met online but had little or no effect for those who had met face-to-face.
There are some factors that the researchers were unable to control, such as relationship duration and other possible influences such as attachment style. However, the findings nevertheless point to the positive effect of relationship talk on social media on increasing reported relationship success for couples who meet online.
