Plus, and a why online dating is so popular plus, some women contact me, which is very nice for me. Finally, research shows that online daters tend to be wealthier and more highly educated than traditional daters. By contrast, some traditional daters may stumble into relationships that they may not have specifically sought or ardently desired to begin with. Replies to my comment. When looking for possible partners, there are people who appreciate mental qualities over physical ones. However this is not the case for most of why online dating is so popular, who look into the person's beauty and attractiveness. Regarding physical appearance, people in the real world tend to be so conscious about it that they don't feel confident to express their feelings and thoughts, and that keeps them away from people. This has been going on for years, but now people have found a way out. Verified by Psychology Today. In a previous post I summarized statistics showing that online dating is not only prevalent, but also slightly more successful than offline dating in producing stable i. What accounts for this success? There is no definitive research on this question, but we can certainly engage in some informed speculations. Below, I will present a list of possibilities, and look forward to your thoughts and feedback! Over the past few years, online dating has increasingly become a more widely accepted way of meeting a future partner and today, as many as one in five relationships are believed to begin online. You look through different profiles and you can send out as many requests as you like. With the online world becoming an ever-present part of our existence it was perhaps inevitable that we would begin shopping for love, in the same way we do for clothes, music and most other components of our everyday lives. Throughout human history, changes in culture have always impacted the way we form relationships and the actual concept of the date itself is a relatively recent development. I remember back in the early days of the Internet, if you signed up for a dating site or tried to meet someone on AOL, you were considered a desperate loser. Only the fat chicks and the nerdy guys with severe cases of acne even bothered with online dating. There have always been plenty of places for singles to meet i. And with that, it became more common for singles to look for other singles online. By the middle part of the first decade of this century, I noticed a difference in the type of people that were signed up for online dating sites. Today I want to share with you want I learned about why online dating is so popular. Online dating makes it easy for why online dating is so popular to look for what they want and what they are attracted to. But online, you can look just for that. Or it can be hobbies or activities. Someone people want others that workout on a regular basis, which again is not something you can filter out in real life. Of course, that has its drawbacks: By Aaron Smith and Monica Anderson. Digital technology and smartphones in particular have transformed many aspects of our society, including how people seek out and establish romantic relationships. When we first studied online dating habits in , most Americans had little exposure to online dating or to the people who used it, and they tended to view it as a subpar way of meeting people.