I begin a discussion of the potential costs of Internet matching sites by considering its darkest side. Is it dangerous? Anecdotal evidence from the mid-to-late 1990s, when Internet matching services first emerged, suggested that people were worried about the possibility of sexual predators using the Internet to prey on innocent victims. Because early media articles on online dating focused on this dark side of Internet dating, this was the first infor-mation many people received about Internet matching.
Recent studies have assessed attitudes about online dating, and the concern that online dating can be dangerous remains. For example, in a study of college students’ attitudes about online relationship formation, Donn and Sherman (2002) found that participants expressed concern about their safety when meeting someone online. Another safety concern is about having one’s personal information online, which could potentially lead to various forms of victimization. In the Pew Internet and American Life Project national study examining the role of online dating in American
romance, 66% of the sample who were Internet users agreed that online dating was dangerous because one’s personal information can become public (only 25% did not consider online dating to be at all dangerous). However, among those who reported using Internet matching sites, 52% did not see the activity as dangerous. Another question asked the participants’ views about how well dating websites protect people’s personal information.
Among those who had used a major website, 38% thought it was good or excellent, and only 12% thought it had done a poor job.
Although accounts of sexual predators on the Internet (e.g., Finkelhor, Mitchell, & Wolak, 2000) have received considerable media attention, it is unlikely that such incidences occur more frequently through online matching services than in other open-field contexts for meeting partners (e.g., singles bars). As noted many years ago by Shotland (1989), one type of date rape is called “beginning date rape,” where a man dates a woman with the intent to rape her, “realizing that such an action is less likely to be labeled as rape than would the action of raping a stranger on the street. Such a man may simply date the woman in order to isolate his victim” (p. 260). (Shotland contrasted this type of date rape with other types that occur after the rela-tionship has developed, and that have other causal factors, including sexual miscommunication, peer pressure, and social comparisons.) Some men who are prone to commit early date rape may, today, turn to the Internet in an attempt to isolate female victims. For example, such men may post their information at a matching site and feign interest in a long-term relationship, and then use alcohol, persuasion, and possibly force to achieve the goal of a short-term sexual fling. Men who have such motives, however, are probably more likely to use the free dating sites than the major, scientific matching sites that have a monthly fee and the requirement to complete a long survey.
Furthermore, just as women take precautions in initial dating encounters with those met in real-space so that they do not become a rape statistic, they take precautions when meeting partners through the Internet. Most Internet matching sites assist in safety issues by offering tips for safe interactions and dating, including to: Not post personal information, meet for the first few times in public locations, and stay sober. Some online dating sites, such as True.com, claim that they do background checks on members, and have tried to push legislation that would require all sites to do so. Additionally, watchdog websites have developed that review the dating sites on safety, provide safety tips for meeting dates, and offer steps for conducting one’s own background checks on potential matches.
Although the dangers of sexual predatory behavior on Internet matching sites may be greater for women than for men, men too can become victims.
For example, anecdotal accounts suggest that men are sometimes victims of female prostitutes posting information on dating sites in order to obtain
business rather than a real relationship (Daniel, 2002; reported in Jerin &
Dolinsky, 2007). Certain men who have stigmas (e.g., extreme shyness, disability, etc.) that have made it difficult for them to develop relationships in the real world may be especially vulnerable to this type of victimization.
Another form of online predatory behavior that can occur to users of matching services, both males and females, has been referred to as cyber-stalking (Glancy, Newman, Potash, & Tennison, 2007; Spitzberg & Cupach, 2007; Spitzberg & Hoobler, 2002), which is defined as “the use of the Internet, email, or other electronic common devices to stalk another person”
(US Attorney General, 1999, p. 2, as reported in Spitzberg & Cupach, 2007, p. 137). In some such cases, the cyberstalker becomes obsessed with the other (the victim) and is in pursuit of the other’s attention and affection. Cupach and Spitzberg (2004) refer to obsessive relational intrusion as “repeated pursuit of intimacy with someone who does not want such attentions” (p. 3). This can occur when an ex-partner is reluctant to have the relationship end and tries to rekindle the relationship, but also commonly occurs at the initiation stage of the relationship (Cupach & Spitzberg, 2008). One person may want to develop the relationship, and the other (the rejecter) does not and then becomes subjected to persistence by the pursuer. “Research verifies that a substantial number of relationship initiations are unwanted, yet inappro-priately persistent” (Cupach & Spitzberg, 2008, p. 419).
The steps involved in relationship initiation on Internet matching systems can be conducive to forms of obsessive relational intrusion, such as sur-veillance and hyperintimacy (Cupach & Spitzberg, 2004). For example, the pursuer can unobtrusively engage in surveillance of the target of unrequited affection by returning many times to his or her profile information. In addition, the pursuer can engage in hyperintimacy, by sending inappropriate expressions of desire and doing this over and over again, even though the other has made it clear that a relationship is not desired. Romantic persis-tence may be easy to accomplish in computer-mediated communication (CMC) because it can promote intimacy and disclosure, and allows for easy access to others. Of course, if the “cyberstalker” does not know the identity or contact information of his or her target of affection outside of the anonymous communication system of the matching site, there is a limit to the degree of the unwanted pursuit. In addition, most sites allow users to block messages from an unwanted source.
In sum, the possibility of sexual predatory behavior is a very dark side of online dating that has little in the way of a silver lining. The cost is great to the victim and to society. Fortunately, however, with cautionary behavior, it is rare. For example, in one study (Jerin & Dolinsky, 2007), experienced female Internet daters reported that they viewed the risk of being victimized as a result of online dating to be minimal. Nonmutuality in desire to initiate a relationship is more common, and therefore becoming an unwanted target
of someone’s attention can occur online, just as it does offline. Although unwanted attention can be annoying and problematic, it often does not lead to danger and does not generally last (Spitzberg & Cupach, 2007), although clearly more research is needed to examine how it is manifested in online interactions.