Looking for love in bars, clubs and cafés may become passé as a growing number of Canadians find romance in the inbox, according to a recent study on digital dating. “Online dating has gone mainstream,” says Professor Robert Brym of sociology, who co-authored the study with his wife, Professor Rhonda Lenton of McMaster University. More than one million Canadian adults have visited online dating sites, and Brym says social forces will soon push this number even higher. Time pressures prevent many singles from finding partners in conventional ways, he says, and digital dating is a convenient alternative. Among many surprising results, the study found women have especially good chances of meeting someone on Internet dating sites since men outnumber them two to one. And these men are not the stereotypical computer-obsessed loners. Compared with the general Canadian population, Brym says they are more likely to be well educated, employed and sociable – off-line as well as online. But the study, funded by the Web portal MSN.ca, also discovered that about a quarter of online daters misrepresent their age, appearance or marital status.
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