Online Dating Research Articles

The Effects of COVID 19 Pandemic on Neurosurgical Training in The United States

INTRODUCTIONNeurosurgery is one of the youngest and rapidly evolving surgical disciplines. After adequate training, residents graduate with the capability to practice across different settings such as academic centers, community hospitals, and others. We present the effect of COVID 19 pandemic on the surgical case volume in a US training program.METHODSWe retrospectively reviewed operative case volume at our program for the year 2019 and January-mid April 2020. We chose to include the mid-March to mid-April period as it corresponded to the time when our institution started deferring elective cases. We categorized cases as an elective cranial, elective spine, and emergency (trauma and other non-elective cases). We then summarized and compared the number of cases during this period.RESULTSThe average number of cases in 2019 was 99 cases per month (37 elective cranial, 42 elective spine, and 20 emergent). In 2020, The total case number in January, February, March, and mid-March to mid-April was 97, 86, 71, and 41cases respectively. In comparison to January 2020, February, March, mid-March to mid-April showed a 12%, 27%, and 58% reduction in the number of cases. The absolute number of emergent cases was comparable in January through mid-April 2020 (17,11,15, and 16) but in mid-March to mid-April emergent cases constituted 39% of the total case number.CONCLUSIONNeurosurgical residency is an eighty-four months of rigorous training with a minimum of 800 cases is required to prepare residents for a successful career in neurosurgery. The significant decline in the number of cases due to COVID 19 might affect the quality of training, especially for senior residents.

Digital crime, trauma, and abuse: Internet safety and cyber risks for adolescents and emerging adults in the 21st century

ABSTRACT The shift in the technology landscape has altered the technology ecosystem of adolescents and emerging adults in the 21st century. Yet, with greater use of digital gadgets comes greater mental health risks that technological advancement brings. This study provides a narrative review of contemporary cyber risks faced by adolescents and emerging adults. In particular, this review will cover dangers and effects of cyber-bullying, social media, cyber-dating violence, sextortion, sexting, revenge porn, online dating, catfishing, and scammers, with an emphasis to raise awareness and encourage proactive efforts dedicated to address these social concerns as the digital era continues to evolve.

Supporting users in finding successful matches in reciprocal recommender systems

Online platforms which assist users in finding a suitable match, such as online-dating and job recruiting environments, have become increasingly popular in the last decade. Many of these environments include recommender systems which, for instance in online dating, aim at helping users to discover a suitable partner who will likely be interested in them. Generating successful recommendations in such systems is challenging as the system must balance two objectives: (1) recommending users with whom the recommendation receiver is likely to initiate an interaction and (2) recommending users who are likely to reply positively to the recommendation receiver initiated interaction. Unfortunately, these objectives are partially conflicting since very often the recommendation receiver is likely to contact users who are not likely to respond positively, and vice versa. Furthermore, users in these environments vary in the extent to which they contemplate the other side’s preferences before initiating an interaction. Therefore, an effective recommender system must effectively model each user and balance these objectives. In our work, we tackle this challenge through two novel components: (1) an explanation module, which leverages an estimate of why the recommended user is likely to respond positively to the recommendation receiver; and (2) a novel reciprocal recommendation algorithm, which finds an optimal balance, individually tailored to each user, between the partially conflicting objectives mentioned above. In an extensive empirical evaluation, in both simulated and real-world dating Web platforms with 1204 human participants, we find that both components contribute to attaining these objectives and that the combinations thereof are more effective than each one on its own.

Use of social media and online dating among individuals with a history of affective disorder.

To investigate how individuals with a history of affective disorder use and perceive their use of social media and online dating. A questionnaire focusing on affective disorders and the use of social media and online dating was handed out to outpatients from unipolar depression and bipolar disorder clinics and general practice patients with or without a history of affective disorders (latter as controls). The association between affective disorders and use of social media and online dating was analysed using linear/logistic regression. A total of 194 individuals with a history of unipolar depression, 124 individuals with a history of bipolar disorder and 196 controls were included in the analysis. Having a history of unipolar depression or bipolar disorder was not associated with the time spent on social media compared with controls. Using the controls as reference, having a history bipolar disorder was associated with use of online dating (adjusted odds ratio: 2.2 (95% CI: 1.3; 3.7)). The use of social media and online dating had a mood-congruent pattern with decreased and more passive use during depressive episodes, and increased and more active use during hypomanic/manic episodes. Among the respondents with a history of affective disorder, 51% reported that social media use had an aggravating effect on symptoms during mood episodes, while 10% reported a beneficial effect. For online dating, the equivalent proportions were 49% (aggravation) and 20% (benefit), respectively. The use of social media and online dating seems related to symptom deterioration among individuals with affective disorder.

Detectability and desirability of fear of being single in online dating profiles.

Those who fear being single generally do not have difficulty attracting prospective partners. The present research explores whether this is because daters cannot detect fear of being single, or because detected fear of being single does not hinder desirability. In Study 1 (N=235, 60% women, Mage =36.9), participants created dating profiles then rated the desirability of profiles depicting high versus low fear of being single (high narcissism control). In Study 2 (N=176, 69% women, Mage =21.4), participants evaluated fear of being single and desirability of actual profiles. Differences in fear of being single were detectable. Furthermore, detecting higher fear of being single predicted lower romantic desirability. Desirability ratings were due, in part, to estimating lower physical attractiveness (Study 2). Perceivers' own fear of being single moderated effects, such that those higher in fear of being single were not deterred by higher fear of being single. Fear of being single may be detectable when online dating, but desirability of detected fear of being single varies depending on perceiver traits and may be driven in part by misperceptions of physical attractiveness. This research sheds light on challenges for those who fear being single as they attempt to attract mates.

A matter of time: publication dates in Web of Science Core Collection

Web of Science Core Collection, one of the most authoritative bibliographic databases, is widely used in academia to track high-quality research. This database has begun to index online-first articles since December 2017. This new practice has introduced two different publication dates (online and final publication dates) into the database for more and more early access publications. It may confuse many users who want to search or analyze literature by using the publication-year related tools provided by Web of Science Core Collection. By developing custom retrieval strategies and checking manually, this study finds that the "year published" field in search page searches in both online and final publication date fields of indexed records. Each indexed record is allocated to only one "publication year" on the left of the search results page which will inherit first from online publication date field even when the online publication date is later than the final publication date. The "publication year" field in the results analysis page and the timespan "custom year range" field in the search page have the same function as that of the filter "publication year" in search results page. The potential impact of the availability of two different publication dates in calculating bibliometric indicators is also discussed at the end of the article.

DIGITAL CULTURES OF CARE, SAFETY AND WELLBEING

Practices of self-care and social support have long been identified across social media platforms and apps, as people find new ways of using and adapting digital technologies to mediate and address personal and public health issues. But digital health participation is considerably contested and unevenly experienced, whether through the commodified ‘platformization’ of the health sector, or in the potentially ‘unhealthy’ engagement with dominant social media platforms or dating and hookup apps. Contemporary policy frameworks for participatory, digital-enabled healthcare (e.g., NHS, 2019) assume that we all engage in health or help seeking practices online, but have no answers to associated risks of over-exposure, invasive health surveillance or experiences of discrimination and harassment online, particularly for those at the margins. In our case studies, this is pertinent for transgender, non-binary and female hookup app users, people seeking support for mental ill-health, illicit drug users participating in crypto-markets and dark web communities. In response to this scenario, this panel asks: what are the forms and capacities for collective care in the current digital ecosystem, between social media platforms and dating apps struggling to address harassment or mental wellbeing, within health service-supported online forums, and across the dark web? This panel looks at evidence and answers, as well as research practices and ethics, to understand personal and collective attempts to negotiate, manage, circumvent and otherwise find ways to reinvent cultures of care through digital platforms.

The Role of Dating Site Design in Gendered Self-Representation and Self-Animation in Online Japan

In this paper, I discuss self presentation in online dating, specifically, online dating in Japan. I give particular attention to the question of how the design affordances of particular online dating apps help to partially structure how users construct their own profiles. Profile construction depends in part on what sort of fields have been provided for the user to fill in, as well as on which are mandatory, and which are optional. To some extent, norms of what a dating site is, or can be, or should be, structures the kinds of fields that designers add to the app, so that some are universal and inevitable (a name, age), while others are specific to particular sites and apps, and flexibility in filling out these fields varies. Profile construction also depends on what kinds of guidance are given to users when they create their profiles, upload pictures, or write profile text, whether in the form of rules or suggestions. Guidelines for acceptable pictures or measures of profile completion have an effect on the extent to which users fill out profiles, and what they put in them when they do. We can fruitfully analyze this as a kind of social “animation,” (Silvio 2010), wherein multiple parties collaborate to produce the illusion of a single person or character. Here, users fill out profiles in collaboration with the site and its different constraints, affordances, and display options; the technology mediates and animates the users’ self-presentations.

Věková homofilie na české online seznamce

This article examines age homophily on a Czech online dating site using real user data. With a sample of 10 563 unique users and the aid of negative binomial regression, we test two hypotheses based on previous studies of online dating - namely, that men and women show different partner preferences with respect to age and that women in particular favour age homophily in their contacts. The model results support these hypotheses. Men are observed to prefer younger women, while women prefer men who are the same age or older than they are. Given that there are significantly fewer women on the dating site, they are the ones who choose, and the pairing result depends on whether they respond to a contact or not. The youngest women are contacted by men of all ages. Although men contact much younger women, they have a better chance of success with older women. Our conclusions are thus consistent with international research on homophily in the online environment and to some extent the results correspond to patterns of age homogamy in the Czech Republic. Unlike international research, however, the attractiveness of Czech men is found to decrease as they age.

COVID 19 and Entrepreneurship: Time to Pivot?

Abstract I thank JMS for this invitation to explore how COVID 19, and its aftermath, leads us to question some of the fundamental assumptions of entrepreneurship research In this dialogue, I highlight five fundamental assumptions of the field that are challenged by COVID 19 that may require a research pivot, i e , that may require a change in research direction on specific topics

The perceived threat of demographic shifts depends on how you think the economy works

Research shows that people exhibit a conservative shift in their politics when their majority group status is threatened. We reasoned that perceptions of threat posed by shifting demographics might depend on individuals’ folk economic beliefs. Across three experiments, White Americans read about projected demographic changes (“threat”) or changes in online dating (“control”) before expressing support for political policies. They also indicated whether they viewed the U.S. economy as a zero- or non-zero-sum system. Relative to controls, participants in the threat condition expressed more support for conservative policies, but only if they conceptualized the economy in zero-sum terms; those who conceptualized the economy in non-zero-sum terms actually endorsed slightly more liberal positions under “threat.” However, these effects obtained only when participants expressed their economic views before their political attitudes. This suggests folk economic beliefs shape how people respond to threats to their majority status, provided those beliefs are first made explicit.

Can the “internal couple” be our faithful lifelong partner?

For over fifty years the concept of the “internal couple”, as a composite internal object co-constructed in intimate relationships, has been fundamental to a psycho-analytic understanding of couple relationships and their contribution to family dynamics. Considerable societal change, however, necessitates review of how effectively and ethically the concept meets practitioners’ and couples’ current needs. Does the concept of an internal couple help psychotherapists to describe and consider all contemporary adult couples, whether same-sex or heterosexual, monogamous, or polyamorous? How does it accommodate online dating, relating via avatars, and use of pornography? Is it sufficiently inclusive of those experimenting in terms of sexual and gender identity, or in partnerships that challenge family arrangement norms? Can it usefully support thinking about families in which parents choose to parent alone, or are absent at their children’s conception thanks to surrogacy, adoption, and IVF? These and other questions prompt re-examination of this central concept’s nature and value.

Mate selection among online daters in Shanghai: Why does education matter?

Prior studies of assortative mating have shown that people tend to marry someone of the same educational level, but why individuals value a mate’s education and the process of mate selection itself remain a black box in predominantly quantitative studies. With online dating’s growing popularity, research needs to examine how online daters navigate dating markets given educational preferences they hold and “freedom of choice” offered by technologies. This study aims to investigate individuals’ educational preferences and how educational preferences shape mate selection processes in online dating. In-depth interviews were conducted with 29 university-educated, heterosexual online daters (13 men, 16 women) in Shanghai. Data were analyzed through a combination of abductive and inductive coding strategies. Results showed that both educational levels and university prestige were primary mate selection criteria in online dating. Both genders considered educational sorting essential for achieving cultural matching, but only men emphasized the importance of spouse’s education for their future children’s education. Furthermore, guided by their educational preferences, online daters deliberately chose dating platforms and screened dating candidates. We argue that online daters’ emphasis on university prestige is rooted in China’s hierarchical higher education system, and gendered rationales for educational preferences stem from ingrained gender roles in Chinese families. Seemingly “personal” preferences are therefore shaped by cultural norms and institutional contexts. Moreover, results suggest that online dating may reinforce social closure among China’s educational elites.

Co-opting the neoliberal manhood ideal: Masculinity, normativity, and recursive normalisation in Serbian gay men's digital dating profiles

AbstractThis article investigates sexual and gender ideologies in online dating profiles of Sebian gay men using corpus-linguistic and discourse-analytic methods. Selected keywords are analysed in context, and particular attention is paid to collocation patterns, including grammatical collocates that are shown to carry discursive relevance beyond style. The analysis reveals that repeated associations centre on concepts of masculinity and normality, in a local indexical order of ‘proper’ manhood, sexuality, global modernity, and national identity. Overall, the texts are most strongly characterized by adversarial distance towards certain gay men, operating in normalizing assimilation to the national (heterosexual) citizen ideal. A broader mechanism, termed recursive normalisation, is described as underpinning the observed patterns. The findings are further discussed as highlighting the pitfalls of theory and social movements focused on social assimilation, arguing for the need for further queer linguistic deconstruction of the normalising discourses that intersect marginalized communities and broader, systemic hegemonies. (Gay men, online dating, masculinity, recursive normalization)

Internet use and need for digital health technology among the elderly: a cross-sectional survey in China

BackgroundChina is becoming an aging society at the fastest pace in history, and there are a large number of empty nesters in the country. With economic and social development, internal support systems among families are gradually weakening. Supporting the elderly is thus emerging as a significant issue, and promoting digital health technologies is an effective way to help address it. Encouraging the application of Internet to elderly care and Internet use among the elderly are important means of promoting digital health technologies. This paper examines the current state of the use of the Internet by the elderly and factors influencing it (including physical, psychological, and social) as well as demand among the elderly for smart services.MethodsA total of 669 subjects over the age of 60 years were randomly selected from 13 cities in Heilongjiang province and surveyed using questionnaires from May 1 to July 31, 2018. The questionnaires were collected for descriptive statistics, the chi-square test, and the analysis of influential factors.ResultsOf the people surveyed, 38.6% used the Internet. Their favorite online activity was online dating (74.2%), and the health information they obtained through the Internet was mainly related to diet (63.1%) and exercise (47.1%). The subjects demanded smart bracelets (MD = 2.80) and emergency callers (MD = 2.77). Gender, age, education, monthly income, quality of life, number of friends, and social participation were found to have an impact on Internet use.ConclusionsMore measures are needed to reduce barriers to the use of the Internet and promote digital health technologies. The society, equipment manufacturers, and family members of the elderly should work together to enable them to reap the benefits of online technologies.

Surveillance, stigma & sociotechnical design for HIV

Online dating and hookup platforms have fundamentally changed people’s day-to-day practices of sex and love — but exist in tension with older social and medicolegal norms. This is particularly the case for people with HIV, who are frequently stigmatized, surveilled, ostracized, and incarcerated because of their status. Efforts to make intimate platforms “work” for HIV frequently focus on user-to-user interactions and disclosure of one’s HIV status but elide both the structural forces at work in regulating sex and the involvement of the state in queer lives. In an effort to foreground these forces and this involvement, we analyze the approaches that intimate platforms have taken in designing for HIV disclosure through a content analysis of 50 current platforms. We argue that the implicit reinforcement of stereotypes about who HIV is or is not a concern for, along with the failure to consider state practices when designing for data disclosure, opens up serious risks for HIV-positive and otherwise marginalized people. While we have no panacea for the tension between disclosure and risk, we point to bottom-up, communal, and queer approaches to design as a way of potentially making that tension easier to safely navigate.

Sexualities of Imagined Bodies During a Time of Social Isolation

As the world shifted into social isolation at the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic, many found remote dating to be their only outlet for romantic and sexual interaction. In this paper, I examine the constructed reality of personal advertisements in the COVID‐19 era. I focus on the meaning individuals find in online dating and how they use their imagination in the development of online relationships. I followed the stories of those individuals who took out personal advertisements in the New York Review of Books at the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic in March 2020. Although I draw on textual analysis of these advertisements, I am less concerned with the genre and more concerned with the ad authors' relationships to online dating. By conducting interviews, I found that online relationships offer their own distinct pleasures and that their format affords individuals more freedom of self‐presentation and expression than in‐person dating, thereby setting participants up for potentially more successful romantic first impressions.

A decision paradox: benefit vs risk and trust vs distrust for online dating adoption vs non-adoption

PurposeOnline dating services have been growing rapidly in recent years. However, adopting these services may involve high risk and trust issues among potential users toward both online dating services and the daters they introduce to users. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how perceived benefits vs risks, and trust vs distrust affect user adoption vs non-adoption intentions toward using this rather controversial information and communications technology in the context of online dating.Design/methodology/approachStructural equation modeling was used to evaluate the research model using data from a survey of 451 single individuals.FindingsThe results indicated that perceived benefits play more essential roles in adoption, while perceived risks affect non-adoption more. Individuals' trust in online dating service predicts a major portion of the variation in user benefit perceptions, while distrust in online dating service and in daters that users might select significantly influence perceived risks. Moreover, benefit and risk perceptions can mediate the impacts of trust and distrust on both adoption and non-adoption decisions.Originality/valueThis study extends theories of decision-making in the use of controversial information technologies such as in the case of online dating. It investigates the coexistence of various trust and distrust beliefs as well as benefit and risk perceptions, and their different impacts on adoption and non-adoption in online dating services.

Psychosocial Barriers and Enablers for Prostate Cancer Patients in Starting a Relationship

Single prostate cancer (PCa) patients may face difficulties in starting a new relationship for various reasons. Here, we studied barriers and enablers to starting a relationship for PCa patients and characteristics of patients who were and were not in a relationship. PCa organizations distributed for us a 20-minute online survey, consisting of validated questionnaires (on treatment side effects, loneliness, social provision, and shyness) and questions on factors identified by patients as barriers and enablers to forming a new relationship. Participants were either single [n = 20] or had started a new relationship post-diagnosis [non-single, n = 15]. Three factors—confidence, sexual function, finding the right person—were perceived of as factors that can affect starting a relationship. Fourteen of twenty single patients were confident that they could find a partner and sixteen were comfortable in disclosing their cancer diagnosis to a potential partner. Non-single patients met their partners through various ways, including online dating and social events. They all revealed their cancer status prior to starting the relationship, and most partners reacted well to this disclosure. Single patients were lacking emotional support, more shy, and lonelier than non-single patients. Clinicians need to consider biopsychosocial factors when advising single patients who wish to start a new relationship.

Swipe Right?: Experimental Analyses of App-Based Dating in the Age of Criminal Stigma

ABSTRACT Stigma associated with prior incarceration could make dating difficult. To test this in online dating, an experimental audit used constructed dating app profiles of Black, Latinx, and White males and females. Experimental and control profiles were identical with the exception of a parole disclosure statement in bios of experimental profiles. Surprisingly, the White female profile disclosing parole was the only one to match with significantly fewer users. We analyzed the racial congruence of matches and found that White parole disclosing profiles were more likely to attract White users and Black and Latinx profiles attracted more heterogeneous users regardless of parole disclosure. The interaction between racial and criminal stigma and implications for relationship prospects among the formerly incarcerated are considered. Although the timing of criminal history disclosure matters, criminal stigma is unique in app-based dating, having more negative effects for Whites, which differs from other social domains.