Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Cyber Dating for the College Student

           

            Since when did online dating in college become a thing? I guess I missed the boat. After hearing about it incessantly from friends, from acquaintances, and in online posts, I decided to do some investigating of my own. I dug deeper for an article in my journalism class. It was funny, I thought, a thing my friends did as kind of a joke, something silly they did in their spare time. Tinder, OkCupid, DateMySchool; I’d heard of people that had tried them, but usually as somewhat of a social experiment, just to see what would happen. But it turns out the joke was on me. My friends were actually using social media sites in place of more “traditional” tactics of finding dates. As I searched for sources to write about, people seemed to come out of the woodwork. Some of my friends had been on several successful dates through apps you could download on your phone, others had even found a significant other. They were shocked I hadn’t done the same. Was I missing something?