Why Divorce Rates are Affected by Online Dating, And How

Josue Ortega at the University of Essex and Philipp Hergovich at the University of Vienna in Austria found that the rise of the internet dating services may be the cause of stronger marriages, an increase in interracial partnerships and more connections between people that don’t revolve around our everyday social circles. Nowadays more than one third of marriages begin online.

Today, the second most popular way to meet partners for heterosexual couples is online dating, which is the most popular form of dating for most homosexuals, by far. Since the launch of the iPhone, sites like OKCupid, Match.com, Tinder and other sites form eharmony to Grindr, had an enormous impact on the way our society functions in terms of getting to know new people. Dating has been revolutionized with the release of apples first iPhone in 2007, and Dating apps have exploded in popularity.

A study showed that dating behavior used to revolve around social networks, which usually boiled down to friends of friends, colleagues or neighbors resulting in meeting people like ourselves. As a result, the dawn of online dating brought forth a whole new pool of potential dates, mostly strangers, and it became a lot more diverse than it used to be.

“We don’t always fall in love with our clone so a wider dating net, be it outside of race and ethnicity or tapping into a large LGBTQ pool creates happy unions,” said dating coach Meredith Golden.

A Model, created by Ortega and Hergovich lead to the conclusion, that when more people make connections outside of their own circles, including interracial relationships, this results in a much more blended society, with more couples being interracial. More interracial couples could help getting rid of prejudice and racism. Also, couples who met each other through online dating tend to be happier. The model shows that on average, relationships of couples who met through online dating last longer.

There is more research to back this thesis. A 2013 study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that online daters have slightly higher marital satisfaction rates than those who met offline. There is a 1% difference between divorces of people who met online compared to those who met offline. Of the 19.131 couples who got married after meeting online only 7% have been separated or divorced. According to experts the overall U.S. divorce rate is 40% to 50%.

Source: marketwatch.com