While many have worried about the long-term potential of dating apps and sites, research suggests that such tools may actually be helping more people to get together in new ways, and for good.
In response to the rise of online dating, economists Josué Ortega and Philipp Hergovich recently set out to examine its effects on society as reflected in the data on how our marriages and relationships are forming. Ortega explained over Skype that while he'd been witnessing the trend all around him, he realized he "had no idea" what the experience or real-world impacts could be.
"I realized that all my students were using Tinder, which sounded to me like some kind of scam. I started reading about it, and was really surprised to find it’s very popular in the UK and US, because there’s this sense that Tinder and other platforms are just for hookups," Ortega said.
"When I came across the statistic that one third of marriages start online, and 70% of gay relationships, I was shocked," he said. "And the more I talked to people, the more I heard that they'd met their partners on Tinder and other sites."
After reviewing data on how various kinds of relationships were forming in the wake on online dating, Ortega said, "It seemed like it was changing not just the number of interracial marriages, but also how we meet our spouses, and having other big consequences."
So Ortega, an economics lecturer at the University of Essex, and Hergovich, who's pursuing a PhD in economics at the University of Vienna, decided to test their hypotheses on how the internet has changed modern dating by crunching the numbers.
To investigate the effects of online dating over time, they developed a theoretical framework and mathematical models which harnessed previous such exercises, decades' worth of data, and good old game-theoretic stability. The team also sought to account for other potential factors, such as rising Asian and Hispanic populations in the US.
Using this framework, they then successfully demonstrated through 10,000 simulations that adding online dating to our traditional partnering patterns--which rely heavily on people we already know, and who are often ethnically similar to us--could help explain the recent greater-than-predicted rise in interracial marriages.
With the help of researchers and data hounds across several continents, they concluded, "When a society benefits from previously absent ties, social integration occurs rapidly, even if the number of partners met online is small ... consistent with the sharp increase in interracial marriages in the U.S. in the last two decades."
Based on 2013 data from the National Academy of Sciences, they also discovered that marriages created online were less likely to break up within the first year, while such partners reported a higher degree of satisfaction, too.
"We found that online dating corresponds with way more interracial marriages, and way stronger marriages, from a mathematics perspective," Ortega said.
Last month, the pair published their findings in an online article, entitled "The Strength of Absent Ties: Social Integration via Online Dating," through the electronic archive and distribution server arXiv. In the weeks since, the work has been gaining attention around the world, and brought the theoretical researchers into the spotlight.
Hergovich commented by email that as intriguing as he and his colleagues found their work to be, "none of us saw that [public attention] coming." He continued, "Working with a close friend is always fun, but the big media echo surprised me. When I saw our names in the print version of the Financial Times, I was absolutely stunned."
Ortega said their work has received media interest reaching from Australia and the UK to Japan and Peru, but that he's also seen a number of heartening, very personal responses to their findings. For example, he said, "I thought Tinder was mostly for really young people, but sometimes when I'm giving talks, others will come up to me and share their stories--a professor of around 70 recently told me he met his second wife on there."
It's worth noting, Ortega said, that such platforms have offered real advantages for those of us who have a hard time meeting people in real life, whether because of age, orientation, or disposition. That's been especially true for the queer community, he noted, and for older people looking for a partner.
Overall, Ortega said, we'd do well to stop thinking of dating apps and platforms as the digital flavor of the week, or something to be embarrassed about.
"Online dating is seen as too superfluous and trivial," he added, "and it has more important effects than most of us expected."
For many of us, at least, they seem to be happy ones.