Older Adults Search for Love on the Internet

Older adults turn to the Internet to find "The One" largely because of the time constraints in their busy lives, experts have observed.

Alicia Cast, the Iowa State University associate professor of sociology and her graduate research assistant, Jamie McCartney, examined nearly 175 central newlywed couples and found that spouses from 25 of those couples first met, courtesy the World Wide Web.

Boffins, in a preliminary analysis presented at the Midwest Sociological Society's annual meeting, explained structural constraints had much to do with the resort to turn online.

Cast said: "In many cases, there are some real structural forces that encourage the support and use of these technologies. And one of them is just structural constraints on people's time -- such as people who have kids, or have full-time jobs, or work long or extensive hours. They might also be older and the majority of people who are in their pool of eligibles are already in relationships."

Cast continued: "There's an interesting contradiction there because the people who look online may not be perceived as being serious [by friends and family]. But the people who are doing the actual searching may look at it as a way to be incredibly serious about the process. And one of the things we found was that, indeed, their courtship periods are shorter." (ANI)

Source-ANI
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