By now, most people in the dating world have already seen or heard about the recent Atlantic article about how online dating is purportedly threatening monogamy as we know it. In the chaotic aftermath of that article, many people likely received frantic calls from their parents, pleading with them to close all their online dating accounts and to “stop trivializing romance!”
Fortunately for the monogamists and worried parents of the world, a rebuttal article surfaced on The Atlantic the next day, claiming that, statistically, there is little evidence to support such dire claims. But what the evidence did suggest is that online dating may actually lead to more marriages by helping people find more strongly compatible partners.
We at Coffee Meets Bagel wanted to jump into this debate, so last week we pushed out a survey asking our lovely bagels what they thought about online dating and whether it was affecting their ability to seek and sustain good relationships. We published a sneak peak of our results on Thursday, and we can confidently say that, at least among the Coffee Meets Bagel population, online dating has not diminished the majority of users’ desire or ability to find serious relationships.
Commitment is safe!
In fact, 65 percent of Coffee Meets Bagel users said they are primarily looking for a relationship. And online dating doesn’t seem to be hurting anyone’s prospects of finding that sort of relationship. When asked if online dating makes them want more casual dates and fewer serious relationships, 60 percent of men and 50 percent of women said that it has no impact either way, and interestingly, 14 percent of men and 40 percent of women said online dating has the opposite effect – it causes them to want more serious, monogamous relationships! This flies in the face of the original Slater article, which suggested that online daters would be paralyzed by the breadth of alternative matches and thus never be willing to fully commit to the match they found.
Online dating may actually help with commitment.
One interesting finding from our survey is that, of the people who believed that online dating made them actually want to more strongly seek committed relationships, most believed that as they met more and more people from online dating sites, they increasingly realized just how hard it can be to find the right match. Rather than give up on finding a match, our bagels seem to emerge from online dating more resolute than ever to find their special someone. Maybe that’s the best New Years resolution of all.
Starbucks $10 Gift Certificate Winner
Thanks everyone for participating! Here are the 3 winners of the survey. We will email you with more details on how you can redeem your gift.
Kat*********@ymail.com
sun*********@gmail.com
all*********@gmail.com

About Coffee Meets Bagel (CMB): CMB  is a free dating service that helps members make meaningful connections. It’s designed for busy singles who want to find something real with little or no effort.