Has Technology Killed Old-Fashioned Dating?

As I have been learning about dating in today’s technology based culture I am finding that we have become a society fixated on immediate gratification.  Everything has to happen right now. 

We text and receive an immediate response and when we don’t it’s as if time has stopped and the world is ending. We e-mail instead of sending a letter because “snail mail,” as it is now referred to, is a dead art form.

We call people’s cell phones rather than their home lines because we can contact them where ever they are at that very moment.

There is the old adage “patience is a virtue” but it seems that we are no longer a virtuous society because we no longer have the patience to wait for a letter or call someone when they return home.

So now you may think, what does this have to do with dating? Well when I see what happens with online dating for example, I find that the days of courting and wooing are over because that just takes too long. 

Back before online dating was the norm, you would meet someone and the process of dating took time and patience. A number would be given, a phone call made, a conversation or more had and then a date scheduled. I can’t help but think of the Bugaloo song “Video Killed the Radio Star.”  I think the iphone killed old fashioned dating.

Today you poke, wink, e-mail and text a potential date. You may speak on the phone, you may not.  You meet for a drink or coffee, maybe a meal.  But instead of a call the day or two after the date, you receive a text or an e-mail.  It is a quick acknowledgment of your meeting. No one talks to each other anymore. That takes too long.

We need to know now if you enjoyed the date, not tomorrow but the moment you turned your back to say goodbye. When that text doesn’t come, well then the relationship must be over.   

Relationships are made in code. “How r u?”, “Kk”, “TTYL”. A full sentence takes too long to compose and to read. We need to know now, not five seconds later, what you are thinking.

Why is everyone in such a rush? I guess because when you online date the quantity of potential dates far exceeded what we knew in the past. You have hundreds - perhaps thousands - of men or women to choose from. You don’t have to take the time to make an investment in someone because you can have another date tomorrow or even right after the one you are on. So hurry up and decide if this is the love of your life, someone better may be waiting to be winked at.

If you have a dating experience you would like to share for a future blog topic, feel free to email me at friend2friendnetwork@gmail.com or post a comment I would love to hear from you right now. TTYL, LOL.