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When I initially raised the topic of online dating with our Youth Advisory Board members I was referring to twentysomething-targeted matchmaking sites like OKCupid.com and chemistry.com. I figured older members might have an interesting take on the stigma or increasing lack thereof (if you take the word of match.com, i.e. 1 in 5 relationships today start online…) around the virtual option.

That post will probably still happen (guest posters are welcome to weigh in!), but what I heard back from American teen in Switzerland Caroline Marques seemed equally noteworthy: an update on the way teens are adapting traditional flirting to general purpose sites like Twitter and Facebook, both for flirtations that start online and off, and the issues this raises for a reluctant technodater.

Remember you can communicate directly with any member of the Ypulse Youth Advisory Board by emailing them at youthadvisoryboard at ypulse.com…or just leave a comment below.

The Blurred Lines Between Online Dating & Dating Online

These days, technology has a role in everything teens do: friendships, school work, free time and now even their relationships. Online dating has been around for some time, but it seems like the teens I know are only starting to become interested in it because of their comfort levels with Facebook and Twitter.

For instance, I know some of my friends have friends on FB that they accepted even though they had very few or just a single mutual “friend” they didn’t know that well. Why? Because they were cute and their profiles seemed interesting enough. Basically it seemed like harmless fun. After all, isn’t it “just Facebook”?

I’m not so sure. Personally, I’m not so comfortable with all this. Don’t get me wrong, I love FB, and it’s not like this type of online “dating” is inherently bad. I know some young people are just sick of their town, the guys or girls available to date there and everything else. They want something else, but they can’t go anywhere else. So why not try online? You might meet someone your own age who is just as bored as you. Someone who isn’t crazy (as assessed by that mutual friend, maybe some “Googling” and lots of conversation), is a nice person and might just be your first love.

But still, I think online dating is tricky with teens. Setting aside safety concerns, I think most teenagers usually depend a lot on the relationships that surround them in real life. When you start accepting “cute strangers” into your life just like all the other friends you know, I think it can be problematic. If you never meet the person (or even if you do only once or twice), there are certain ways you can never know them in the same way you know the friends you interact with in person everyday. So knowing whether the relationship would actually work offline, or if the person is even loyal to you, is very hard to figure out. But then maybe that’s just me. If you’re a teen who’s already spending all your time socializing online, maybe dating someone that way isn’t such a stretch.

After all, in some ways even the dating that starts offline these days depends heavily on online interactions. I’ve realized a lot of couples who go to the same school spend more time sending each other texts, tweets and messages with cute notes and short conversations than actually seeing each other. Before you used to meet your future boy/girl friend at a party, a dinner, a school event, a lunch etc. and then make plans over the phone to see them later. But now, it’s you see someone at a party or function, and then add them, and then start “talking” to them.

It’s an old game with new rules: you can calculate how much the other teen is “into you” by how many times their name pops up to talk to you on chat, how many hearts they use to sign off their Facebook messages, how many photos they  ”liked” of you. You see people say “Yeah, we talked online…really cute…maybe we’ll grab lunch in two weeks” just as enthusiastically as they’ll say “You won’t believe the message he just sent me.” In some ways, teens are “dating online” — it’s just another aspect to teen dating in general.

About Caroline

Caroline is an American student in eleventh grade in Geneva, Switzerland and enjoys it a lot. This year will be her second year serving on the Youth Advisory Board, which she loves because she’s currently an international student and she likes keeping up with the numerous U.S. trends in various departments. Between YAB, sports, school (as well as traveling, trying to master several languages, spending a lot of time on the computer, writing long papers, music and watching American TV), she doesn’t have a lot of time on her hands, but always finds time for the two passions she’s always had: reading and writing.

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Categorized under: Web, Youth Advisory Board

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