Adults who have Internet access at home are much more likely to be in romantic relationships than adults without Internet access, according to a new research.
Although prior research on the social impacts of Internet use has been rather ambiguous about the social cost of time spent online, this study suggests that Internet access has an important role to play in helping find mates, say the authors.
According to the study, 82.2 percent of participants who had Internet access at home also had a spouse or romantic partner, compared to a 62.8-percent partnership rate for adults who did not have Internet access.
In addition to this, the study also found that the Internet is the one social arena that is unambiguously gaining importance over time as a place where couples meet.
With the meteoric rise of the Internet as a way couples have met in the past few years, and the concomitant recent decline in the central role of friends, it is possible that in the next several years the Internet could eclipse friends as the most influential way people usually meet their romantic partners, displacing friends out of the top position for the first time since the early 1940s, noted the research team.
The study also found that the Internet is especially important for finding potential partners in groups where the supply is small or difficult to identify such as in the gay, lesbian, and middle-aged heterosexual communities.
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