If you want a long-term relationship, searching for a partner online should be avoided, according to a study.
According to researchers from the Michigan State University in the US, married couples who met online are three times more likely to divorce than those who met face-to-face.
That’s not all. The researchers led by Dr Aditi Paul also found that online daters are 28 percent more likely to split from their partners within the first year.
To arrive at these conclusions, the researchers studied 4,000 couples.
The researchers found that couples who met in more traditional ways such as introductions by friends or through work, hobbies or socialising had stable relationships when compared to those that met online.
The researchers observed that the breakup rates for both marital and non-marital romantic relationships were found to be higher for couples who met online than couples who met through traditional ways.
So if you are seeking to get married, looking for a partner online might not be the best option as couples who meet online are less likely to get married and generally have a poorer relationship quality than those that met offline.
The research suggests that 86 percent of online daters were concerned that profiles contained fake information suggesting that trust may have been damaged at an early stage in the relationship.
The study was published in the online journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking.
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