Online Couples More Likely to Break Up

The first thing online dating websites will do in their bid to lure you to subscribe, is boast about their matchmaking success stories, the men and women who’ve successfully locked paths across a crowded chat room and gone on to enjoy long and everlasting love.

Unfortunately for those who believe the hype, a new study has come along to dash our dating dreams by telling us that couples who meet online are less likely to get married and more likely to break up. Cheers, science.

As per the folk at Mashable, “Is Online Better Than Offline for Meeting Partners? Depends: Are You Looking to Marry or to Date?” analyzed data from another study called “How Couples Meet and Stay Together” to ascertain whether those who hooked up online had more success than those who met offline.

Aditi Paul, author of “Is Online Better Than Offline for Meeting Partners?” and a doctoral candidate at Michigan State University’s Department of Communication found that of the couples examined, those who met online were less likely to get married than those who met in the old fashioned way. In more bad news, those who had met online and even married, were said to have higher break up rates than those who married offline. Aditi Paul explains that such failure rates come down to our initial choosiness when it comes to finding a partner online, and how easily we can flip flop from one potential partner to another as though we were browsing through clothes on a sale rack. “Online daters know that they can easily look for other potential partners from the dating sites.”

There is light at the end of the tunnel, though. While the study is relatively new, it’s based on an examination of data gathered before the arrival of Tinder into our lives. Naturally, as Tinder has taken over as the go to app for finding love at the click of a button, we’d need to see a fresh study in a few years time that explores online dating success in an era where almost everything we do, we do online. Have you found love on the interweb?

Do you think it can be as successful, longterm, as, say, meeting the love of your life on a crowded train station platform, the winter wind blowing in your hair as cupid strikes you both wiht a bad case of the love bug? Do tell.

@CarolineForan