Brad Lee / South Torrance High school 10th Grade

Do you believe in love at first sight? Well if you do, you’re definitely not the first. About 71% of online daters fall head over heels when meeting for the first time. In an age where technology is advancing at an outstanding speed, social media has increasingly dominated our society to the point where we utilize it for online dating.

Rather than the traditional way of meeting up with the “significant other,” more and more individuals have taken the leap to join online dating sites. In a recent poll conducted by Time magazine, 35 million Americans have tried online dating out of the 60 million single Americans. Online relationships have became so trendy that idiomatic sites have sprouted to match your peculiar interest such as tallfriends.com, seacaptaindate.com, faremersonly.com, and even vampirepassions.com. Surprisingly, one-fourth of these users have gotten married in the past year of 2013. In addition, statistics taken by StatisticBrain.com have stated that 30% of online daters believe that personality is the most important thing on a first date. Nonetheless, many daters do fabricate their online profiles especially those in the weight, age, and height category. However, the dangers of online sex predators are still very prominent. People still need to be cautious and wary about using online dating sites as statistics show 10% of users are actually sex offenders. For instance, one of the most popular online dating hoaxes occurred between prominent football player Manti Te’o and his fake girlfriend Lennay Kukua back in 2009. Only communicating via texts, emails, and phone Te’o was His then “girlfriend” died on September 11, 2011 by a fatal car accident.

However, it turned out that Lennay Kukua was actually a male named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo. Even through the strife of online dating, there has been a 15% increase from the year before and is increasingly becoming one of the most common ways of forming a personal relationship. As these types of relationships become more prevalent in society, your love at first sight might actually be through a web chat.