Online Dating Versus Pre-online Dating

...they didn't expect to be writing letters to each other "to get to know each other better first".....

This topic came up in another thread and I just thought I'd throw it out here to find out what other people think.

eHarmony has a guided communication process that people use to get to know their matches better. Some people feel they have to go through this process before they pick up the phone and call the person. Am I right in thinking that this has created a mental block in some people? They think that they have to answer written questions and emails first before they talk to someone and meet them face to face.

With pre-online dating it seems that people were less hesitant to pick up the phone and phone the person they wanted to meet - meaning they did so more quickly, they didn't expect to be writing letters to each other "to get to know each other better first".

There's been some talk on the news where I live lately that with all our computers, iPods, Blackberries, and the internet, people are losing the face to face social skills that earlier generations had. To me this is transferring to the dating scene as well. Some people in earlier generations may not have been very good at "dating", but it seems that we're losing our skills at meeting / dating people face to face - more so now than previous generations.

Ive done both and I really think that "in person" stuff is superior to the internet for dating specifically.

idk really if technology has impacted society as a whole, socially, in a negative way though.

At one time, before your time or mine, the proper courting technique was begun with a pen and paper. And one may consider that (in my younger days) the courting process was begun by passing notes back and forth in class. So based on this I disagree with the concept that because of online dating we have been conditioned to expect that we have to answer written questions / e-mail before picking up the phone.

Also I would ask how, in your, pre-online dating days you exchanged phone numbers in order to have called someone. I am presuming that you did it face to face in school or at a bar.

I do not disagree with the premise that because of IM and texting people have lost / are losing the ability to communicate via the written word. And may be losing the ability to communicate at all. Though I don't think that we are losing our need for social interaction i.e. date in person.

Look around you - restaurants, bars, other assorted social venues and events are bursting at the seams with young people out and about socializing and having fun.

Every single generation has it's fair share of people who are not particularly social. If anything, the internet has actually opened a venue and a way for these people to reach out that did not exist before. Granted, those people will struggle even with that. However, their failures have more to do with them and their personal issues than anything else.