2go, Eskimi, Badoo…: 4 Important Things You Should Know About Online Dating

Internet dating is becoming so common that is it having a noticeable effect on our culture at large. One area of concern for many is the effect that internet relationships are having on individuals, especially teenagers.

Online dating has been a revolution ever since it started, but like every coin has another side to it. Online dating poses some serious side effects, which if not taken care of shall result in disasters. You need to understand how online dating can affect your life, habits, routine and time management. Before getting into details, a word of caution to all those passionate online daters: be careful and understand that prevention is better than cure!

More negative effects of online dating:

1. Risk of meeting a dishonest person who created a profile with a dating site only for scamming other members, telling them he/she is in need of help and would appreciate if they could cooperate with money.

2. It’s easy to be fooled by inaccurate signals online. When you go online, instead of seeing a person up-close, hearing him speak and watching her move, what you get is a blurry, postage-stamp size series of static photos which cannot be heard, felt, or smelled.

3. You can waste a lot of time online chasing what you don’t want. Here’s the timeline of a typical online courtship for a guy: He sees a profile of a girl he likes. He writes her. He gets a response. An online correspondence ensues.

If her interest continues, they speak on the phone, and begin to plan a meeting. After some time, they meet in person. And it turns out that she is not what the guy has expected or some other insurmountable shortcoming that could have been ascertained in the first 30 milliseconds of an in-person encounter.

In an instant, all those hours spent on witty texts, all of that effort to be charming on the phone, learning all about him or impressing her. And worst of all, you kinda feel like a fool for building it all up in your mind for naught.

4. And of course, for ladies, there is also the risk of falling into wrong hands – people who after gaining your trust will capitalise on it and abuse you to any length, which might include rape.

Internet has been a great revolution and probably the very reason for the arrival of the information age, but you need to be careful while using it because addiction to anything is never good. And when it comes to online dating, it is great if you find a genuine person but it can really be very dangerous too. There are many more, less risky,  options to finding a partner (if you’re so obsessed with having one, anyway – but why should you be?).