Among older people, internet dating can be seen as dangerous or desperate. Among younger people, it has become the taken-for-granted way to meet new people, because so much of their social life is online anyway. The media pounce on every case of ‘romance fraud’, or where a relationship initiated online ended badly. So there is supporting evidence for almost any perspective you choose on internet dating, whether good, bad, or indifferent.

Meeting new friends and/or lovers via websites on the internet is most popular, and highly concentrated, among young people, especially unmarried singles. Tinder is the most extreme addition to the repertoire. It shows you photos of men and women in your vicinity, who you might like the look of enough to respond with a YES, rather than a NO to an immediate date – with the potential for a spontaneous sexual encounter. Grindr is the equivalent website for gay men, which established the idea of spontaneous sexual adventures via the internet.

Beyond this, there is a huge array of websites catering to every social group and specialist taste: wine-lovers, sports-lovers, religious groups, people with socialist values, all the way to the classic match-making firms that help people find and meet a like-minded spouse.

Paradoxically, internet dating is most valuable to the older age groups who are least likely to use it. Unlike young singles, they cannot readily meet new partners by hanging out in bars or visiting noisy nightclubs – even if they have the stamina for dancing all night. Internet websites provide the modern meeting place for social groups that are thin on the ground, geographically dispersed, hard to identify by age or looks alone.

This new technology is having a huge impact on social life, on how men and women meet partners, on courtship in the 21^st century. Some of the impacts are less desirable than others.