As time progresses, it is natural for technological advances to also progress. In my lifetime alone I have seen the invention of the cell phone and the amazing year to year advances they design to improve it’s functioning. With this technological change, brought upon society a new way to date, such as online dating. In today’s world our smart phones are used more than our computers. This is because we can email, call, text and surf the web on our phones. Not to mention we can download applications that will “advance” our social lives. What I mean by this is that we can download dating applications, in order to find a new date on the go, or to stay in contact with a newfound companion anywhere we take our phones. This differs dramatically from how dates where set up in the past, because 15 years ago, these technologies did not exist, and thusly individuals would have to meet future dates in person, or by recommendation of a friend.
This picture illustrates perfectly the amount of individuals who date online verses their smart phone. You can see that the amount of users dating on their smartphone increases each year, to the point where in 2011 it beat online dating. This was the most current graph applied to this social problem, but I can only imagine its numbers now.
This change can be applied to social change research because the general idea is that the researcher(s) are actively changing something in a social situation that they are a part of (PSU 2015). It would be rather interesting to see the amount of social interactions, if researchers went to a bar and told patrons that they could not use their cell phones the entire time they were there. Would this decrease or increase the amount of socialization in that bar, because in today’s world we use our cell phones as a buffer. Constantly checking it, texting, playing games while talking, is a lack of attention focusing.
This would be an interesting social experiment, because the current generation is not used to meeting companions through face to face interaction, but rather phone to phone interaction. In today’s America the total number of single people are around 54,250,000. With that being said, the total number of those individuals who use dating sites on their phones are roughly 41,250,000. (Statistic Brain 2014). This is a staggering number as it shows that only 13 thousand individuals do not use their smart phones to find dates. Perhaps online dating on your phone is the new “craze”, but the misconception is that you do not need to join one of these websites in order to find love. We as humans have been finding mates since time has begun, and I think we have done pretty good before we could show our emotions with smiley faces and heart eyes.
The Pennsylvania State University. (2015). Lesson 13: Social Change/Participatory Research. Retrieved April 2015, from Psych424: Applied Social Psychology: https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/sp15/psych424/001/content/14_lesson/03_page.html
I can connect with your message. I am one of those people who does not like to spend a ton of time on my phone, but I will occasionally catch myself on it wandering through Facebook looking at people who I don’t really care about, then I stop and think to myself, put the phone down. No matter if I like to be on the phone much or not, I still feel I am drawn to it, possibly because in today’s world it has become a social norm. I have also explored the online dating world as well. While I still do like to go out and try to meet people, I figured why not try something else as well. With the growing technology that we now face, and with apps popping up for everything you can possibly thing of, it was not long before online dating sites also created an app. An app which I have also downloaded. If I found someone on the dating site I was interested in, I could easily message them from my phone through the site any time of the day, anywhere. I do think that meeting people the old fashion way is exciting, but that does not mean that meeting someone online is not either. It is just a new concept in a modern era. Think of it as the first bar.
I think your example of the change in social-dating is very interesting. It is true that finding date online has been more common nowadays. Though I was kind of surprised by the statistics which showed large amount of people finding date online. Finding date online seemed convenient, but risky. The first reason is that pictures on those dating websites could be not true. Many people use photoshop or other software to make them look better. In this case, the pictures are edited. A man may find a woman very attractive online, but less attractive in real life. The second reason is that the profiles on dating website could be wrong. It may be risky to date a person who did not write his/her true profile online. Therefore, a better way might be to find date on those websites which require applicants to provide true information.