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With the Covid crisis ending New Years celebrations and many other opportunities to seek romance in person, dating apps have thrived.
But while that technology has long been associated with connections, one study suggests that those who meet after swiping to the right have as satisfying a relationship as those who met through traditional encounters – and might even be more willing to settle down.
“In fact, we found that somehow couples who met through dating apps have even stronger long-term relationship or family building intentions than other couples who met offline or through other digital forms of dating. meeting, “said Dr. Gina Potarca, author of the research. from the University of Geneva.
In an article in PLOS One magazine, Potarca analyzed the results of the 2018 nationally representative survey of families and generations conducted by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office that questioned people aged 15 to 79 about a crowd of issues, including where the couples knew each other and their intentions within that relationship. .
Potarca focused on a sample of 3,245 people with a partner over the age of 18, and whose relationship was no more than 10 years old, and found that while most people reported meeting their partner offline, 104 knew their partner through dating apps, 264 met them. through dating websites and 125 found a match through other online services.
The proportion of people who meet their partner through dating apps increased dramatically over time.
But analysis of the responses to the questions about relationship intentions revealed that there was little difference when it came to marital intentions and the desire or intention to have children between those who met through apps and those who met. out of line. What’s more, there was little difference in relationship and life satisfaction.
In fact, those who met their partner through an app were more likely to plan to move in with them if they weren’t already cohabiting, even when factors like age were taken into account. Additionally, women who met their partner through an app were more likely to want a child in the next three years than those who met their partner offline.
The study also found that dating apps were linked to couples forming across wider geographic distances, and that highly educated women pair up with less educated men; The latter, Potarca said, could be because app matches are more based on appearance and may be less influenced by social stigma.
Potarca said the study rejected fears that dating apps threaten long-term relationships. “These moral panics don’t usually reflect the real trends that are happening,” he said.
However, the study is only based on respondents in Switzerland, and some of the questions were only directed at people in heterosexual relationships. Also, the number of people who met their partner on a dating app was relatively small, while cause and effect are difficult to unravel given that the study is based on observations alone.
Kathryn Coduto, an assistant professor of communication and media studies at South Dakota State University and a dating app expert who was not involved in the work, added that there could be biases in who answered the survey and how. But he said the results were in line with smaller studies suggesting that dating apps weren’t leading to a “dating apocalypse.”
Coduto added that while some might be surprised by the findings about dating app users wanting to cohabit sooner and possibly more willing to consider children, many people download apps in search of long-term relationships.
“In fact, if that’s your motivation for downloading the app and you know someone with those same goals, you’d probably be ready to move sooner,” he said.
Coduto said it would be interesting to take a closer look at non-heterosexual relationships and how many partners people had had through dating apps before meeting their current partner.
“It’s easy to read this study and think that all of these people hooked up, matched with their partner, and broke up and were ready to have children or at least move in together,” she said. “I guess it was a lot more arduous than that, so it would be interesting to know what that process was like.”
