Reader Submitted
May 15, 2008
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SUBMITTED BY MIKE: The use of models in advertising is nothing new; but in online dating, where your product is people, the practice raises some potential ethical questions. Dating sites and their advertisements are laden with pictures of smiling, happy couples. These lucky men and women represent the dream of every single dater out there… or so they would have you believe. The carefree lovebirds deny a very real truth about an industry where the success rate is around 22%.

Most sites use stock photography. The couples are models, and were probably total strangers before the photo shoot. But even when they are “actual couples,” they are carefully selected for their demographic appeal. In other words: your results may vary.

This seems pretty obvious, but there have been countless studies linking eating disorders in young girls to unrealistic images of women in the media. For clarity–I don’t think that the consequences of exposure to happy couple imagery are as life-threatening as anorexia. However, there can be a profound impact on one’s psychological well-being when we start to equate concepts of self-worth to our relationship status or when we compare ourselves to artificial relationships.

Photos of happy couples serve as a motivation to continue paying for service, but also as a reminder of what you don’t have as a single person. Equating happiness with a relationship is a recipe for disappointment. Research has shown that over time human happiness returns to a baseline after the brief initial euphoria of a new relationship. That brief instant is attributed to the neurochemical PEA, which has been likened to methamphetamines.

In this way, the dating industry serves as a drug pusher to “love junkies,” people looking for that high. For the other 88% of us, the high never really hits and there’s just a lingering disappointment and self-doubt. Am I too picky? Am I not pretty? Etc.

I know a great many people who are tremendously successful, but downright miserable because they can’t find boyfriends. I nickname this phenomenon “relationship dysmorphic disorder”: a condition characterized by a preoccupation with one’s lack of a relationship and belief that one’s life is worse for being single.

Online dating can be a great way to connect with people, but you should never feel bad about being alone. What we never see in these virtual singles bars are single people engaged in fulfilling solitary hobbies or enjoying quality time with friends. Between the sexy models on TRUE who want to “chat now for free*” and the happily married people who met on eHarmony there’s little room to imagine being happily single.

[Photo by florianstamm]