The Rise of Online Dating: Communication Professor Appears on WNYC's "The Leonard Lopate Show"
February 14, 2009
 Jennifer Gibbs, assistant professor of communication, is an expert on how we present ourselves in virtual contexts -- anywhere from global work teams to social networking sites to services like Match.com, eHarmony.com, and the many other online dating sites available to people looking for virtual love.
Listen to Jennifer Gibbs discuss online dating on "The Leonard Lopate Show"
"We have seen a pretty steady rise in online dating since the late 1990s," Gibbs said on the February 13 edition of "The Leonard Lopate Show." "People are waiting to get older to get married. Once they get into the workplace they may not have a pool of eligible people to date." Gibbs appeared on a 35-minute segment of the show on WNYC, the flagship station of National Public Radio. Gibbs and Gian Gonzaga, a research scientist at eHarmony Labs and the UCLA Interdisciplinary Relationship Science Program, talked about how online dating differs from dating "IRL" (in real life), and the future of the virtual love match. More than 35 million people are online at this moment looking for love, Lopate said. In the roughly 10 years since the Internet has become a force in all our lives, sites like Match.com have become prominent along with niche dating sites -- those for people of certain cultural or religious backgrounds, partisans with particular political leanings, people with pets, and individuals who live "green" lifestyles. The Internet, Gibbs said, was once thought to be a force to bring together people from different backgrounds. "It became more and more specialized and people tend to use it to seek out people who are like themselves," she said. "These niche sites are a way for people to have a starting point." Gibbs has studied the choices people make in presenting themselves online, and how people trolling through personal profiles weed out potential soul mates. "It is kind of a complex process for people," Gibbs said. "What do you say about yourself, who are you, how do you want to be perceived by others?" Online, Gibbs said, people tend to be more picky about demographic details -- for example, preferring someone whose height is listed as 5'11" to one who is 5'9".
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