Where a couple meets may follow them into marriage. In a survey of 923 married Americans, people who met their spouse through online dating reported marriages that were somewhat less satisfying and less stable than those of people who met offline.
The researchers call it the online dating effect. They also stress that it is small: marital quality was still relatively high in both groups.
The study is by Liesel L. Sharabi of Arizona State University’s Hugh Downs School of Human Communication and Elizabeth Dorrance-Hall of Michigan State University. It appeared in the January 2024 issue of Computers in Human Behavior as “The online dating effect: Where a couple meets predicts the quality of their marriage.”
A matched national sample
The participants were recruited from an online panel and matched to US Census figures on age, race and gender. Roughly half had met their spouse on a dating site or app, and the rest had met through conventional offline routes such as school or a bar.
The authors note that an often cited 2013 study had found the opposite, with online couples slightly happier and more stable, but that the online dating landscape has changed a great deal since.
People who married someone they met online were different to begin with. They were significantly younger, averaging about 33.5 years old.
Outside pressures, not personalities
The gap in marital quality did not depend on individual differences between participants. Instead, it was explained by pressures from outside the relationship.
Couples who met online faced more societal marginalization and more geographic distance. Those pressures affected how much partners disclosed to one another and how much they felt their friends and family approved of the relationship. That, in turn, was tied to lower satisfaction and stability in the marriage.
Asked whether people achieve long-term success through online dating, the authors answer yes and no. Online couples reported slightly worse marriages, but their average marital quality was still relatively high, and the differences traced back to the circumstances they courted in rather than to who they were.
Study Details:
- Title: The online dating effect: Where a couple meets predicts the quality of their marriage
- Authors: Liesel L. Sharabi, Elizabeth Dorrance-Hall
- Journal: Computers in Human Behavior
- Publication Date: January 2024
- DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2023.107973