When it comes to modern dating, everything has changed. No more serendipitous bumping into your future wife at a bus stop, or whilst on a work trip. No more meeting “friends of friends” at house parties, or when staying late at the library. No more strategic approaches in night clubs, or inquisitive questions in coffeeshops. No. Now it’s swiping right, or sending digital roses. It’s DMs, memes and music recommendations; it’s bullet points, and ick lists, and split second decisions. Today, meeting romantic partners is not bound by geography; and it reaches far beyond your friend group, to encapsulate theoretically any single person on the planet. Dating has taken a digital form. And with new tools, comes new rules, and new risks. Online abuse, threats, coercion, violence, and harassment, has never been a more pressing issue, nor have there been more people vulnerable to it; and so a new era of research and interventions must urgently follow. Let’s take a look: Here are some of the main findings from a huge 2022 survey of nearly 10,000 Australian adults; to help lay this groundwork, to understand our new landscape of online love. So have you experienced online harms, facilitated by dating apps? Have you been harassed, stalked, coerced or abused, by those you’ve met through them? What do you think? ~ Source

2026-06-12