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4 Ways Online Dating is Making Us Do First Dates Wrong

And the dangerous harm our new dating culture threatens us with

Katie E. Lawrence
6 min readDec 30, 2024
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Online dating is a great thing. My mom met my stepdad on Match, and that’s just the beginning of beautiful stories of people meeting online. It’s one of those things that can’t make love happen for us, but it can help us find a compatible life partner — one that we wouldn’t have encountered otherwise.

I work in relationship education, and I’ve heard every kind of story of how people meet each other. I’ve also heard the faulty mindsets that people, often students being raised in today’s love culture, bring into their search for love.

To put it simply, we’ve got some issues. Here are four things I’ve seen take over dating culture today, particularly when it comes to finding love online:

#1: We try and pitch ourselves

The part about dating apps I hate the most is the way it feels like a business pitch. You, me, forever? The apps are no longer just about getting a date — it’s about proving that you can be “the one” for someone on the other side of the screen.

You’re putting your self-esteem on the line, continually being rejected or accepted by different profiles that you view as having a certain worth.

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Katie E. Lawrence
Katie E. Lawrence

Written by Katie E. Lawrence

B.S. in Family Science, Research Assistant for the Alabama Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education, Family Life Educator, and amateur yapper. (:

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