Internet Safety News
E-Dating Services
by Anne Collier
"The golden age of online dating is upon us," reports Salon.com,1 citing the popularity of services at Match.com, which reported a 195 percent increase in paid subscriberships over the same quarter last year, and personal ads at Yahoo®.com, Bust.com, and other sites both general and specific. And the "industry" is evolving, as are the way people present themselves in personal ads. "In keeping with current advertising trends, today's online singles market themselves not by highlighting their best traits, but by creating an imaginary self that's impressively snarky and carefree," showing that people seeking dates are taking advantage of the Internet's anonymity.2 Salon looks at the sociology of all this, with smart questions like, "what does it mean to peddle yourself so effectively before you even meet your prospective partner? Can there possibly be any room left for the real, flawed, fragile human behind the ad?"3
Those and other questions might be useful for family discussions about marketing vs. reality wherever one "meets" people in cyberspace dating sites, personal ads, chat, diaries, or instant messaging, all of which are popular among teenagers. Another thing parents might want to know is that online dating services can also be fronts for dangerous, illegal online activity. In a recent interview the mother of a 15-year-old who was lured out of state to meet a sexual predator told us the man worked full time for an Internet dating service.
1Heather Havrilesky. Meat Market.com.
Salon.com. May 15, 2002, http://salon.com/mwt/feature/2002/05/15/online_dating/index.html.
2Ibid.
3Ibid.
Anne Collier is editor of the SafeKids/NetFamilyNewsletter and president of NetFamilyNews.org, a nonprofit news service for parents and teachers of online kids.
