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Technology and Romantic Attraction

I pick my son Colin up from a school “activity night.” “How’d it go?” I ask. “Great!” he exclaims. “I met this really cool girl, and got her number.” “Are you going to call her?” I ask. Colin rolls his eyes at me. “I’m going to text her,” he says. Sure enough, the exchange of text messages begins during the ride home, and as soon as we get through the door, he sprints for the computer and begins exchanging IMs with her.

Today, the enormous range of communication technologies available has refined and enhanced the attraction process. You can establish virtual proximity to attractive others by befriending them on social networking sites (Facebook, Tumblr) and then exchanging daily (or even hourly) updates and posts. Similar to my son Colin, you can assess a prospective partner’s similarity to you and the rewards he or she could offer you by interacting with the person through text-messaging or simply by checking their personal Web pages and online profiles. You can assess physical attractiveness by viewing online photo albums and video clips. On dating sites such as Match.com, eHarmony, or even free sites such as Craigslist, you can enter a set of search parameters—desired age, profession, appearance, interests, sexual orientation—and immediately see a broad range of potential partners.

But despite the conveniences they offer, these technologies also evoke tensions. For one thing, you have to decide how honest to be in your online self-presentations (Ellison, Heino, & Gibbs, 2006). Because so many people now use online communication to gauge each other, you may feel great pressure to present yourself as highly attractive—even if that means providing a distorted self-description. In a survey of more than 5,000 online dating service users, misrepresentation of self was commonplace (Hall, Park, Song, & Cody, 2010). Men were more likely than women to exaggerate their education level and income, and women were more likely to lie about their weight. And both men and women over 50 routinely distorted their ages to appear younger. Correspondingly, people view others’ online dating profiles skeptically. Users liken profiles to “résumés”; that is, they are vehicles for marketing one’s “best self,” rather than accurate glimpses into one’s authentic identity (Heino, Ellison, & Gibbs, 2006). Just as people lie on their résumés, so too do online daters presume that others will lie in their profiles. As one online dating service user describes, “Everyone is so wonderful over the Internet. What the Internet doesn’t tell you is that, ‘I’m defensive, I talk about my problems all the time, I can’t manage my money’ ” (Heino et al., 2006, p. 435).

If your goal is to forge an offline romantic relationship, distorting your online self-description is ultimately self-defeating (Ellison et al., 2006). When you mislead someone online about your appearance or other personal attributes and then take your romance offline, your partner will discover the truth. Such unpleasant revelations are commonplace: one study found that 86 percent of people using online dating sites report having met others who they felt had misrepresented their physical attractiveness (Gibbs, Ellison, & Heino, 2006). When people feel misled, the outcome is often a damaged impression, negative emotion (such as resentment or anger), and an injured or even ruined relationship (McCornack & Levine, 1990). Clearly, the most ethical and practical thing you can do in your online self-descriptions is to accentuate your attractive attributes without resorting to distortion or dishonesty. If you feel you may be “crossing the line” into deception, have a trustworthy friend check your online description or personal profile and assess its authenticity.