Making Sense of online Dating - Is online Dating Bad for Society?

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An aspect that can’t be left out of this essay is whether online dating is dangerous to teenagers or not. It is a big problem that some users in this kind of platforms play the role of a different age character to catch the attention of teenagers with malicious intentions. Attempts to solve these issues have been made by using facebook integration, which maximizes the authenticity of the people in these platforms, though does not eliminate the problem completely. However, by educating people to be very aware of these dangers and the means to prevent them, we can minimize the risks of online dating.

“To understand new media, we need to consider both the technological features of a medium and the personal, cultural, and historical presumption and values those features evoke.” (page 22) Having all those aspects considered, it is perfectly normal that society reacts with fear towards this kind of innovation, however, those fears should be an aid to improve the quality of new technologies and not an excuse to ban them. New generations are taking online dating as a part of their life’s, and telling teenagers not to do it, does not shield them of risk, we should acknowledge that it is a common activity and we should respect it and minimize the risks follow.

In conclusion, we should stop blaming technology for the outcome of its progress and instead blame its users for the way they manage it. Tinder doesn’t manipulate teenage girls in order to rape them, a person that uses Tinder unfortunately can. Also, we can’t focus on the negative things only, since there are many successful online dating stories that should be taken in consideration when judging these apps. Therefore, we should focus on solving these problems by educating society to be aware of them as was done with many other non-technological aspects in the past.

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BIBILIOGRAPHY

- Baym, N. (2010). ¨Making New Media Make Sense, ¨ in Personal Connections in the Digital Age. (pp. 22-45). Cambridge: Polity.

- Online Dating Definition. (2016). Oxford Dictionaries | English. Retrieved 5 December 2016, from https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/online_dating