Online dating sites: The means to find love or the gates to self-destruction?

New funded research at the University of Huddersfield is bringing an international team of experts from 16 countries together to examine the risks and benefits of online dating application use, with project leader Dr Calli Tzani aiming for a global examination of the subject.

Dr Tzani, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology, and Professor Maria Ioannou, Professor in Investigative and Forensic Psychology, published new research on the relationship of sextortion with suicide in 2019.

Sextortion is defined as an emerging threat, facilitated by the use of online environments where perpetrators gain the trust of vulnerable individuals in order to obtain sexually explicit material, and then use it to coerce victims for the purposes of sexual, personal or financial gain. Pre-COVID, sextortion was mainly taking place on social media such as Instagram and Facebook, with millions of losses and suicide because of coercion.

Pandemic prompts jump in use and associated risks

During the COVID lockdowns, millions of people turned their interest onto the online dating applications, to maintain their social life and a sense of normality in human interaction. At the start of the first lockdown, some dating applications, such as OkCupid, saw a 700% increase in dates and online dating application use.

“I suspected that sextortion could be on the rise with the reported increase of online dating application users, particularly for the new users that were not familiar with the risks of online interaction,” says Dr Tzani.

“To examine the phenomenon further I developed a new project, which examines the risks and benefits of using online dating applications. ICF funding from the University was awarded with the intention to build international collaborations and to research the phenomenon worldwide.”

Existing collaborators were initially approached to take part in the project, such as Dr Mara Morelli from the Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology and Health Studies at Sapienza University, who had previously collaborated with Dr John Synnott, Professor Ioannou and Dr Tzani on an international project that explored the impact of sexting.

Global collaboration

And the project expanded with new collaborators from the University of Cyprus, Dr Panagiotis Stavrinides, Dr Kostas Fanti and Dr Kryriakos Charalambous. After continuous efforts to grow the collaborative network and with the assistance of existing international collaborators, the project has reached the involvement of 33 academics from social sciences, with the support from 20 international universities from all over the world, including the UK, the USA, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Greece, Turkey, Malaysia, Belgium, Czech Republic, Croatia, and more to follow.

During this attempt to bring together a large team of experts, Mr Thomas Williams, a PhD student at the University of Huddersfield who graduated in 2021 from the MSc Investigative Psychology and is currently supervised by both Dr Tzani and Professor Ioannou, has been assisting with the administrative aspects of the project.

Most of the collaborators are experts in subjects that are closely related to online harassment, such as Prof. James O’Higgins Norman from the Dublin City University, who holds the UNESCO Chair on Tackling Bullying in Schools and Cyberspace and is Director of DCU National Anti-Bullying Centre.

Professor David Lester, Emeritus at Stockton University has been a close collaborator with Dr Tzani and Professor Ioannou for the past five years and has published valuable research on the subject of online fraud and phone scams. Dr Greta Darmanin Kissaun, a highly established Clinical Psychologist from the University of Malta, Professor Vasiliki Artinopoulou, from Panteion University and the Restorative Justice & Mediation Lab and many other highly respected academics are also involved.

Dr Tzanni adds, “The aim of this international collaboration and cross-cultural study is to examine the risks related to online dating platform use. The study will further examine how various factors, like self-esteem, personality traits and mental health, affect dating behaviour and will also investigate the impact of online dating platform use on users.

“Whilst using online dating platforms to find love has its benefits, such as convenience, approaching more potential partners in less time, spending less money on dates at a bar, and even filtering out unsuitable partners at an early stage, there are risks.

“These include the use of such cyber match-makers such as exposure to online sexual harassment, cyberstalking, online grooming, falling victim to scams and impersonation.

"Self-esteem can be damaged by the ease of being rejected or ghosted, there may be false perception of unlimited access to romantic partners, therefore isolation from the real world, and of course sextortion.”

Although the romantic idea of finding the other half on a dating platform with the ease of a smartphone is appealing to many, the consequences of the negative aspects of the online interaction can lead to psychological suffering, financial losses, as well as extreme mental health issues such depression and severe anxiety. In addition, social isolation can occur under the misconception that the suitable partner is the next swipe.

Dr Tzani adds, “I hope that more countries and universities will be involved in the project, which will allow for a global examination of the phenomenon.”