Date: March 02, 2021, 08:54:43 AM
Why childhood sweethearts no longer measure up – and six other ways dating has changed : Romance : Nigerialog.com - Nigeria's Premier Online Forum
Fewer people are getting together with their neighbours – again related to a more mobile population, settling down at a later age. “Seventy years ago, Americans were marrying when they were 19 or 20 years old,” says Rosenfeld. “You haven’t really gone anywhere, so you’re talking about [marrying someone] from high school, church or the neighbourhood – those were the only people you ever met. Now people are settling down later in life, so they’re travelled, they’ve lived in different places and the neighbourhood of origin is not as relevant as it used to be.”It may also have something to do with the fact we don’t know our neighbours any more. A study in the UK last year found 73% of people didn’t know their neighbours’ names and 68% described them as “strangers”.
It could be that, in the wake of #MeToo revelations of sexual harassment, people are keener to have “professional distance at work,” says Ryan-Flood. “I don’t think that’s a bad thing if it makes people more aware about sexual harassment or boundaries,” she says, adding: “You don’t get together with someone who sexually harasses you.”
The rise of online dating has displaced every other way of meeting to a certain extent,” says Michael Rosenfeld, a professor of sociology and lead researcher of the study. “When we last looked at this with data from 2009, friends were still by far the most popular way heterosexual couples met partners. I have been a little bit surprised at how much the internet has displaced friends.” He thought the internet could “leverage friends – that is, you could meet people through Facebook”, but apart from a few dating sites that make that the selling point, people are using online dating entirely separately from their social networks.