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Essay about Social Media’s Effect on the Culture of Dating

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All humans have the innate desire to create intimate relationships with others. The manner in which people engage in romantic relations has evolved throughout time, and today, social media plays an influential role as a medium of communication for initiating romantic connections. While social media has increased the opportunities to connect with others, it has been detrimental to the quality of the interactions that occur in the dating world. Therefore, the conveniences of connecting through social media have generated the consequences of expecting too much and committing too little. This has created a ripple effect by diminishing the value of the entire dating process. Thus, as social media irreversibly transforms the traditions of …show more content…

Thus unrealistic expectations in the online dating world affect what someone expects of others as well as of themselves. For example, my aunt began using the dating service Match.com a few years back and I asked her what her experience was like. She told me that when she created a checklist of what she desired in a mate and then filled in her own profile she realized that she was probably expecting too much for what she potentially had to offer. She expressed that each candidate, while fulfilling some of her preferences, did not match enough of them to make her interested in pursuing a relationship. In addition, she questioned if she was worthy of being someone’s soul mate because she fell short in some of the categories such as financial status or educational level. This ultimately caused her to leave the online dating world in frustration. Fortunately, she had enough confidence left to go out with a nice man at work who is now my uncle. Although he is shorter than her ideal online physical preference and she did not have a graduate degree like he does, they both saw enough in each other in person to drive them to invest time in a relationship and look past their own preferences or prejudices. An online dating service can shortchange a potential relationship by focusing on unreasonable qualifications.

Furthermore, internet dating services make people more likely to impulsively discard the old for the new and thus this unintentionally limits dating

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