The influence of technology on romantic relationships: Understanding online dating

Abstract

A culture’s social fabric is deeply dependent on how its members establish romantic bonds. What happens when the way those bonds are formed is radically changed over the course of a single generation? This is the case with the rise of online dating, which is now the second most common way for people to meet a romantic partner. Despite existing research exploring issues such as mate selection, self-presentation, and impressions, we still do not know how online dating systems affect people’s perceptions—about technology, relationships, romantic partners, and themselves—and how these perceptions affect behavior. In this paper, we introduce and explicate the Source Multiplicity, Attribution, Recognition, and Transformation (SMART) Model of Online Dating. The SMART model is a comprehensive theoretical framework that has interdisciplinary roots in human-computer interaction (HCI), computer-mediated communication (CMC), psychology, and decision science.