Free dating sites, is it really a good idea? Finding love when you are single is not for everyone. It can be a long and sometimes arduous road full of disillusionment. Dating can be very limiting in our private environment. It is limited to the sphere of work and friendship but very quickly, the trick is done. And when we dare to go outside, we are shy and the idea of approaching someone directly scares us and makes us uncomfortable.
The alternative to this is to meet someone through online dating sites. There are many free dating sites on the internet. But are these free dating sites really reliable? Are they sufficient to find someone who will correspond to us? Free online dating sites, is it really a good idea?
Free dating sites are everywhere!
When you want to find love online, there is no lack of dating sites and applications. On Google, you can find an impressive number of sites, boxes and articles promoting the best dating sites:
- Top free and paid dating sites.
- The best sites to find love.
- Easy dating: the sites that work well.
- The best dating applications.
- The most popular dating sites.
We find then these famous names such as Meetic, Badoo, Tinder, adopte un mec, lovoo, Edarling, Atractiveworld, grindr, réseau contact, Quebec rencontre, Happn, anges ou démons, disons demain, Elite rencontre.
Currently in France, there are about 2000 sites. On some dating platforms in Canada, there are nearly 200,000 subscribers. The number of players and consumers in the online dating market is growing. With the use of smartphones and the available applications, love is marked on the screens, love is sought in the clicks. And this is a constant and exciting reality to study.
After our period of confinement, hearts have sought on the web an answer to their lack of love. Virtual start-up love stories were born during this pandemic. Meeting love online is possible, no doubt about it. Nevertheless, it is necessary to make a sincere focus on this flourishing market all over the world.
The dating market
It should be noted that 1/3 of Europeans visit a dating site once a day. Dating sites seduce both men and women and more and more young people between 18 and 25 years old. 1/3 of couples are formed on the internet.
Internet is full of countless online dating sites of all kinds. Each user can find a service that matches his or her interests and intentions. The variety of applications is enormous and has grown phenomenally in a few years. This market has not finished surprising us. The services are multiple and can satisfy many followers who wish to find a relationship.
Today, this market offers three types of dating applications:
- Matchmaking: It is about meeting someone on a long term basis and forming a couple. This application works on algorithms based on the results of tests carried out on users. Matchmaking services immediately propose potential partners to form your couple.
- Onlinedating: This type of application is all about chatting, flirting, exchanging and eventually falling in love. This application allows users to do their own research on criteria such as age for example. The application then creates the possible matches geographically.
- Casual dating: This is for erotic encounters without commitment. This application is light. We show ourselves in photos with a dose of eroticism. It is a sexy dating site by affinity. Its very nature combining eroticism with chic seduces many.
The dating business is growing. The global revenue generated by the dating services market is expected to reach 7.9 billion dollars in 2020. Long shunned, apprehended, dating sites please and attract partners in search of a relationship corresponding to their desires, their aspirations. The concept is constantly evolving.
But today, what is the strategy of free dating sites?
The strategy of free dating sites
The strategy for this kind of sites and applications is general. They put forward the promise of beautiful encounters with free access by simply creating a profile. Then, if you want to go further in the profiles, some of them will be paying at the end of the line. There are two types of subscription:
- a free subscription
- a "premium" subscription
When you sign up for a free dating site, you have favorites and you have the opportunity to communicate with the person via chats. What pleases in this digital system is the immediacy of the meeting. As soon as someone is interested in your profile, you receive an alert.
Are free dating sites a good idea?
Even if this concept of dating sites is in vogue in the era of digitalization, the fact remains that these sites do not have a good reputation because they do not always lead to the desires of users. 10 figures that show that free dating sites are not a good idea :
- 20% of the registered users want an adventure.
- 60% of women don't trust them.
- 36% make a connection without going any further.
- 1 out of 2 people admit to their friends and family that they registered for free on the site.
- 16,3 % are executives against 12,6 % of craftsmen. The gap between socio-professional categories exists and prevents people from different worlds from meeting.
- 9% of couples met on a free dating site.
- 45% of men are on paid dating sites.
- 18% of women are on free dating sites.
- A 25% drop in interest in online dating.
- 25% of both men and women have not managed to get a date on a dating site.
However, some rules seem to me essential for a meeting to go as smoothly as possible and answer the call of love. Finding a partner corresponding to our expectations, our interests and our future plans is not as simple as that with a simple free creation of profiles.
Free sites: an easy but dangerous choice.
On this kind of sites, you will unfortunately sometimes have a lot of disillusions, disappointments. Free sites are an easy choice, immediate but dangerous for you.
Indeed, if fake profiles do exist, what can be problematic and destructive is meeting people who hide their personality at first sight and then make you an easy prey.
Love in real life as well as in virtual life has its share of liars, perverts and manipulators. The concern is that through the easy algorithms and in this version of dating sites, the current services do not allow to limit the access to this kind of person who can reach you and then destroy you psychologically.
The potential compatibility of the beginning can become a real nightmare afterwards. From sexual abusers to narcissistic perverts, free dating takes the intention out of love. The danger of virtual liaisons is proven and becomes more and more complex to manage in the multitude of these dating sites.
Reliability is clearly put to the test through these sites. The virtual facilitates the contact but it lies on the true intentions of the people. We get fooled and that's the tragedy.
Dominique Cardon, a French sociologist and specialist in digital culture, explains in La démocratie Internet that there is an articulation between the way in which users present different traits of their personality and the visibility granted by the platforms of free dating sites. This combination creates the concept called "screen", i.e. participants are only visible to others through a search engine. They remain "hidden" behind categories that describe them, with the possibility of gradually revealing their true identity on a case by case basis.
The In Real Life (IRL) encounter can then be confusing, even comical; or, for the less fortunate, lead to a nightmarish situation.
In the movie "Trust", Annie, a young teenager, trusts Charlie through an online chat, but behind the nickname lies a very different reality. Instead of being 16 years old, he is 35 and it is a spiral of manipulation.
The love relationship through the screens puts thoughts before the body. This is where the fantasies and the dependence on the written word with the other person are born. The whole relationship is based on the psychological level without a real meeting beforehand. The image of oneself and of reality is therefore distorted. We can therefore imagine the extent of the possibilities of narcissistic perverts offered by this type of free dating site. They hide themselves and create a mythical profile! For them, the virtual space is a playground on which they get all the pleasure and power they dream of.
The dating market will explode in the next few years. The reliability and quality of these dating sites will have to meet the requirements of users.
Finding love is not done in a few clicks. To imagine that we can become prey to love on free dating sites is chilling. We can therefore easily wonder about the false good idea of this type of sites.
Dating sites are evolving, be sure. Many algorithms are being developed to find the most compatible matches. But what is certain is that users will need to have reliable trust indicators to engage in these virtual relationships in the first place.
Dating sites like Effet Tandem.com are introducing new quality services with coaches, enriching content, the presence of relationship experts who can accompany you in the course of your relationship.
So choose paid dating sites to have a better guarantee and a human quality service and not blindly relayed to a whole digital machine.
