Online dating has without a doubt changed the ideas of traditional dating. Whether you are old or young, if you’re single, you have to be online. With the younger generation and the rise in smart phone users and apps geared specifically towards dating or hooking up, it’s very rare that young singles will met someone for the first time face to face in a bar or some sort of social event. The older generation is just now starting to catch on with the 50+ segment being the fastest growing group of subscribers for online dating. With all forms of progression or evolution there will be naysayers who insist the old ways are best, now while I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that entirely, I think its we still get the best of both worlds. We can meet people online that we wouldn’t normally have eve come in contact with in our regular lives. We can find communities of people who share common interests. Although while the initial interaction will take place online we still need to follow the practices of traditional dating by physically going on a face to face date with this person to really get to know them. As much as meeting people online broadens the spectrum of potential partners for us we still need eventually be with this person in the flesh. I don’t ever want to live in a world where that becomes a thing of the past! So with all that being said, as with anything, with all the positives come the negatives. So I’m here to point out a few of these unfortunate downfalls and provide some positives that will make up for the shortcomings.

You Can Easily Be Fooled

Unfortunately on the Internet, and not only when it comes to online dating, people can lie very easily. If you have ever participated in online dating then you know how easy it is to be disappointed when someone isn’t who he or she appeared to be online. We’ve all shown up to a date and immediately though “Well their profile picture must have been from 10 years and 30 pounds ago”. This is why I suggest that when you meet singles, you meet them in person as soon as possible to avoid wasting time and saving as much of it as possible. On the flip side though, we can use this to our advantage. Now while I am not promoting the idea that you should lie, but you can post your most flattering photos and chat with someone for a little while so they can get a sense of your personality. This way when you do meet they aren’t judging you based solely on your appearance, but instead on your personality as well.

You Have To Many Options

With a lot of online dating sites having membership bases in the millions there is literally more woman on the Internet then you could possibly ever date and this thought is in the back of people minds while dating someone they met online. It makes it much easier for someone to give up on a person because of a small aspect of their personality or something insignificant because they can always just go fishing for another one. The pro to this is that we all have a much higher chance of actually meeting someone that’s great for us, we just need to have a bit more tact about it, and unfortunately have to go through a few more duds to find them.

Irrelevant Matches

I feel with a lot of online dating websites ask more than they need to. I can understand the idea that the more you know about someone the better you can find their match, but some things I don’t think matter at all. Like what kind of car I drive or what my favorite color is. What this does is leave you with a “match” that on a core level doesn’t fundamentally have anything in common, but instead a bunch of random quirky likes and interests that don’t have much to do with who you are as a person. I’m not a fan of the sites that try to serve a niche because I feel there is so much more to a person then their hobby. Now while we shouldn’t be in a relationship with someone based solely on the fact that we enjoy the same sports team, it is nice to have a place to meet someone who has common interests. That doesn’t mean everyone you meet there will be a perfect match, but at least there is a small connection already there that you can work from and work it will be.

Online dating doesn’t make developing a relationship with another human being any easier. It just provides us tools to reach out to more people and  to have more opportunities to meet singles by expanding our reach since we meet more people online then we would in our day-to-day lives.