Chapter 1: Introduction

Finkel’s (2012) article about online dating stated that online

dating sites frequently claim that they have fundamentally altered
the dating landscape for the better (Finkel et al. 2012). Their article
has employed psychological science to examine whether online
dating is fundamentally different from conventional offline dating
and whether online dating promotes better romantic outcomes
than conventional offline dating. The answer to the first question is
yes, and the answer to the second question is yes and no. They
considered the three major services online dating sites offer to
understand how online dating fundamentally differs from
conventional offline dating and the circumstances under which
online dating promote better romantic outcomes than offline
dating. First is the access, which refers to user’s exposure to and
opportunity to evaluate potential partners they are otherwise
unlikely to encounter. Second is the communication which refers to
the use of different forms of computer-mediated communication
(CMC) in interacting with potential partners through a dating site
before meeting face-to-face. Last is the matching which refers to a
site’s use of a mathematical algorithm to select potential partners
for users (Finkel et al. 2012).
The article of Finkel et al. also mentioned that online dating,
which has rapidly become a pervasive means of seeking potential
partners, has altered both the romantic acquaintance process and
compatibility matching process. Online dating typically involves
learning a broad range of facts about potential partners before
deciding whether one wants to meet them in person. Rather than
relying on the intuition of village elders, family members, or friends
or to select which pairs of unacquainted singles will be especially
compatible, certain forms of online dating involve placing one’s
romantic fate in the hands of a mathematical matching algorithm.
Turning to the superiority questions, online dating has important
advantages over conventional offline dating. For example, it offers
unprecedented levels of access to potential partners, which is
especially helpful for singles who might otherwise lack such access.
It also allows online daters to use CMC to garner an initial sense of
their compatibility with potential partners before deciding whether
to meet them face-to-face. In addition, certain dating sites may be
able to collect data that allow them to banish from the dating pool
people who are likely to be poor relationship partners in general.
On the other hand, the ways online dating sites typically implement
the services of access, communication, and matching do not always
improve romantic outcomes, indeed, they sometimes undermine
such outcomes. Regarding access, encountering potential partners
via online dating profiles reduces three-dimensional people to two-
dimensional displays of information, and these displays fail to
capture those experiential aspects of social interaction that are
essential to evaluating one’s compatibility with potential partners.
 According to the review paper conducted by the pew research
center (2015), through online, teenagers are actively looking for
partnership in terms of findings on the pronouncement of share
personal experiences. They usually create a series of pictures and
few details for social interactions. While most of them frequently
use one site (e.g. Omegle), they interact to meet new people with a
hope to find romantic relations but some of them interacts for
foolish hooks up.
Significance of the study

Technology has considerably affected our culture, the way

people establish relationships in particular. For the past few years,
social networking sites (such as facebook, twitter, instagram, etc.)
have been a notable medium for courting, dating, and looking for
potential partners. One of the advantages of this is that the persn
can immediately focus on people with similar beliefs, age and other
important criteria without having to spend time and money “going
coffee”. However, communication through computers lacks
information about the person that can be provided through face to
face interaction. As a result, it is harder to evaluate a potential
match online. This study would be significant to teenagers since
they are highly vulnerable of this kind of thing.
This research study will be able to:
• To expand the readers and the respondent’s knowledge about
online courting and raise awareness about the possible
consequences of doing such;

• To help the next generations understand how significant courting

is throughout people’s lives and it must be done seriously;
• To help the readers determine the reasons why relationships that
are established through a traditional courting lend to last longer
than those which started online;

• To help in preventing cyber bullying, cybersex, and other serious

offenses that usually occur through social networking sites;
Statement of the problem

Although social media has been a prominent means of

communication and a medium in establishing relationships for the
past years, it also has certain disadvantages that affect the people
engaged in using them. The individuals who often use social media
are predominantly adolescents. Adolescents or teenagers are
tempted to have online relationships with people they meet online,
and\or the people they know for a long time but they never had a
face-to-face interactions with. Also, they are aware that their
parents will never know about them engaging in such activity
because it was “through the internet” to begin with.
Definition of terms

Courtship – a period during which a couple develop a romantic

relationship, especially with a view to marriage and it is a behavior
designed to persuade someone to marry or develop a romantic
relationship with one.

Communication – is a simply the act of transferring information

from one place, person or group to another.

Online – connected to, served by, or available through a system

and especially a computer or telecommunications system (such as
the internet).

Face to face – within each other’s sight or presence.

Behavior – the way in which one acts or conduct oneself,
especially toward others.

Social media – website and applications that enable users to

create and share content or to participate in social networking.

Dating applications – is an online dating service presented

through a mobile phone application.
Scope and delimitation

By focusing broadly on the ways dating sites implement the

services of access, communication, and matching, we were able to
examine the psychological essence of online dating without
becoming preoccupied with any particular claim of any particular
site (although we did not shy away from examining particular
claims where doing so was instructive). Many online dating sites
offer services beyond access, personality assessment, and on
occasion, summaries of scientific studies of romantic relationships.
Although these featured could have important benefits, we
excluded them from this analysis both because they are readily
accessible outside of online dating sites (trough self-help books)
and because their influence involves individual daters obtaining
new knowledge rather than processes occurring between two
potential daters.
Title:

Perceptions of selected grade 8 and 9

students toward online courtship