Online CPR Certification Blog

If you are searching for a perfect mate, a study has shown that turning to the internet might not be a bad idea after all. It was concluded that couples who met online and married had higher chances of staying together for longer and happier compared to those who met in an old fashioned way.

Beginning a romantic relationship online

Even though there was a big number of people that had met online, the difference were quite small and marriage researchers said that the study was coupled with some weaknesses. John Cacioppo, a lead author at the University of Chicago noted that these findings would give great comfort to people who might be thinking that the internet is not the best play to start a romantic relationship. He added that he hoped that the study encourages people to feel even more authentic rather than odd when meeting people online. Cacioppo said that the new world had created a new environment that people shouldn’t be afraid of.

During the study, an internet based dating service by the name eHarmony asked Harris Interactive to undertake an online survey in over 19000 people in US who had married opposite sex members from 2005 to 2012. The results of this survey were verified by independent statisticians. As the marriages in question were quite recent, they had a considerable low rate of separation and divorce, standing at 2.5 percent and 5 percent respectively.

A third of the people who were surveyed had met their spouses through the internet. Of those, a staggering 45 percent had met via dating sites and 21 percent had met via social networks such as Facebook. The ones who had met offline were very young, very old and not very wealthy and met one another at school- 11 percent, through friends19 percent and at work- 22 percent. As per the study, 7.6 percent of the once who had met offline had divorced while 5.9 percent of couples who met online were divorced. This difference remained the same even after researchers adjusted the statistics in order to account for low or high numbers of people who share similarities such as income and age.

Why marriages starting online are more stable?

There are several possibilities as to why couples that had met through the internet had more stable and happier marriages. According to the researchers, one of the reasons could be that they focused more on finding relationships instead of falling into one with someone who they met at work or via friend. As such, their main motive was securing a relationship partner and the couples were thus even more motivated to stay together after marriage.

It was suggested that future researches should focus more on looking at how these relationships evolve either with technology or without. The study was said to be pretty solid even though it still has some flaws.