Meeting people is always a positive aspect of life, and now as the world continues to modernize and technology becomes more important, face to face communication is becoming harder than online chatting, and dates are now being set up online rather than in person. There are many negative aspects to online dating one of them being that you never know if the person you’re talking to is really who they say they are. Catfishing, or luring someone with a fake persona, is one of the few issues that online dating causes. Online dating also prevents you from finding the right partner no matter what you might think.

Nowadays everyone is online, ranging from children to middle-aged adults, some of whom wish to endanger the lives of children. The problem starts with the children being on a dating website, making them vulnerable to outsiders, and it continues as they find their “perfect match”, often being catfished by a much older adult, having consequences like kidnapping or sexual harassment. As Family Education states, it’s important to keep a close eye on children from the ages 10-15 as they go out with people they’ve met online. There are many cases where children have gone missing and parents know nothing about their whereabouts.

Catfishing however doesn’t only happen on a child to adult basis but can also happen between two adults. Pegasus states that “it is extremely easy to maintain secrecy online which makes deceit harder to detect” and because we’re never sure if the profile picture of your potential partner is really them it makes us question if anything about them is real. Statistics show that 63% of the time an online date will use a fake persona to lure you into a relationship. Usually this occurs when the person is either lonely or desperate. It is important to keep in mind that your “true love” may not be who you expected. More than half of online daters are unhappy with the results of their online relationship, that often lacks physical contact. Physical contact is important in a relationship and it creates a sense of security and love.

Opposing Views states that online dating limits how much you can discover about your partner because you cannot see how they interact with other people in a social environment. For example, you don’t see whether they tip a waiter who served you at a restaurant or gave money to a beggar on the street. This adds to the negative aspect that you can never interact face to face, due to long distances or not having enough money to afford a trip, and even if interaction is possible the results are never as expected, stuttering often occurs and the partner cannot carry on a decent conversation. Two people with opposite immune systems attract so that their children could be immune to more diseases, potentially extending his/her life cycle, with online dating this kind of attraction is impossible. Websites put two people together based on their interests not their blood type and genetic make-up.

I believe that online dating turns you into a romantic catastrophe, unable to communicate with others and derive information through their actions instead of  having information listed. Online dating could be extremely dangerous to children and teenagers, since they are easily manipulated they could easily be catfished and harmed. Statistics show that 1 in 27 online daters are happy with their online match and only 1 in 42 are happy when they meet their potential mate. Online dating is good for those who aren’t good with finding a partner but this only restricts their  face to face communication and isolates them more in the virtual world, a big negative aspect that many online daters struggle with.