Dating websites: yay or nay?

Dating websites and apps are increasingly gaining popularity, hence the question of whether they have a bad influence on dating life in general.

Tinder, Happn, OkCupid, Hinge, you name it - more and more apps and sites for dating get launched and more and more people use them. How is this influencing people's dating lives in general? Is it really a good method to use if you want to meet people who might become your love birds, or does it make it all overly superficial? 

Well, this is not an easy topic. We wondered whether dating apps and websites had a negative or positive influence on the dating life in general, and about a third of the people in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway did not really know what to think of it.

In Sweden, 21% don't think dating apps have a negative influence; in fact, using dating apps could take you to completely unknown waters since using such engines supposedly do not take you inside your own network. Dating sites and apps could be a way to get out of your comfort zone and into a bigger searching space, giving you more opportunities to meet the one, if this is what you are after. This is also what the Finns agree on: 41% don't think dating search engines have any negative impact on dating life in general.

In Ireland, however, 34% believe that using such engines does have a negative influence on dating life in general, and 18% believe so to a great extent. An argument in line with this opinion is that by using the apps and websites, you might not give people and actual chance because you know you quickly can arrange a new date. Also, it might diminish the opportunity of randomly meeting someone you could be completely opposed to, but with whom you could potentially bond.

Our quick poll shows that people have very eclectic opinions, and further investigation into the reasons why they believe one thing or the other would be interesting to carry out.