Can you find love on the internet?
MORE than half of people using internet dating sites admit to telling fibs on their profiles, a new study claims.
Pew Research says in its new "Internet & American Life Project"
that 54 percent of online daters have "seriously misrepresented"
themselves on dating websites - fibbing about height, income and age.
That's because some dishonestly has always been part of dating, said Dan Slater, an author and relationship expert.
"Life is a series of small and large lies-and a lot of the misrepresentation is in the eye of the beholder," he said.
Singles tend to tell white lies about whatever they can get away with in order to seem more attractive, he said.
"If
I meet a woman in a bar I obviously can't lie about my height or weight
or hairline. But my internship suddenly becomes a promising middle
management job," he said.
He added some online daters don't actually intend to lie - they may
actually truly believe they still look the same as they did in a photo
from 2005.
The study also notes people dating online are often
disappointed, in part because they tend to create "a fantasy" about
another person that doesn't pan out in real life.
Women are more
likely than men to have had a bad experience dating online with roughly
42 per cent of female online daters claiming they were unsatisfied.
Even so, 59 per cent of people surveyed said online dating is a good way to meet people, according to the study.
Pew
Center researchers compiled the survey data by conducting phone
interviews with 2,252 people, ages 18 years old and up, during April and
May 2013.
This story originally appeared on the New York Post
No comments:
Post a Comment