getting to know people, make new friends, and meet partners and lovers. At the same time, the symbolic boundaries between what is “marketable” and what is “non-marketable” are constantly shifting and spur controversy. As the sociologist Viviana Zelizer observed, economic activity and intimate relations are often thought of as “separate spheres and hostile worlds” with radically different logics, involving rationality on the one hand and emotion on the other, “with inevitable contamination and disorder resulting when the two spheres come into contact with each other” (Zelizer, 2005, pp. 20–21). The expansion of the market into the private sphere has aroused strong fears and is accused of corrupting and “inexorably erod[ing] intimate social ties” (p. 25). The reactions to online dating provide a striking example of these tensions caused by the incursion of private actors into the sphere of intimacy.
Before jumping to the conclusion that intimate relations have somehow been taken over by commodification and rationalization, a key distinction must be made between online dating as an industry – which involves private companies trying to sell their services – and online dating as a practice – that is, how the platforms are used. The market mechanisms ruling the industry do not necessarily and automatically carry over into user practices. Conflating the two would on the one hand lead to a mechanical and deterministic reading of social behavior and, on the other hand, fail to recognize the autonomy of the market. To avoid these pitfalls, I have devoted a specific analysis to the economy of online dating. Despite growing concerns over the role of capitalist market forces in our private lives, there has been surprisingly little academic interest in the companies that operate in the sphere of privacy. This is the case with online dating, where the “market” metaphor, used to describe romantic and sexual interactions, has drawn attention away from the actual marketplace – the actors who create these products, their work, and the norms governing their business (Wilken et al., 2019; Pidoux et al., 2021). The first aim of the book is therefore to pry open the black box of the online dating industry.
The main goal is, nonetheless, to investigate the consequences for users. The disembedding of dating means bypassing ordinary social relations in the search for a partner. With digital platforms, dating becomes a private matter.
The transformation of social life
From its earliest days, the internet has raised questions about social ties. Theories and inquiries have differed over time, going often from enthusiasm to severe criticism, as we can see in the work of internet specialist Sherry Turkle. Known to many for her pioneering work on digital communities and identities, Turkle described the internet, in her first books, as a horizontal and fundamentally democratic universe, reflecting an era when computer users were a socially homogeneous and tech-savvy group and when the enthusiasm about networking was huge (Turkle, 1995). Her last books strike a very different tone. In Alone Together, the internet is no longer liberating but alienating. Turkle raises the alarm on how social media negatively affect our possibility to create real, authentic, and meaningful relationships, especially among young adults, leaving us constantly connected but more alone than ever (Turkle, 2011).
The idea that social relations are breaking down under the impact of new technology is not new (Hampton and Wellman, 2018). At the very start of the century, Robert D. Putnam outlined this process in his best-selling book Bowling Alone, in which he predicted the decline of community in the United States under the influence of new media and technologies, among other factors (Putnam, 2000). Surveys, however, tend to show that exactly the opposite has occurred. A survey by the Pew Research Institute in 2011 showed that individuals who were the most connected were also the ones with the largest and most diverse networks; they had more and closer friends than individuals with less internet activity, and they declared more often to have social support. These results are consistent with those of other studies, carried out in both North America and Europe (Wang and Wellman, 2010; Mercklé, 2011). In France, for instance, social life (e.g. social visits, entertainment, and meals with friends and family) tends to have increased over time (Dumontier and Pan Ké Shon, 1999), and the most digitally connected people have been found to interact more with people in the physical world, and more often (Mercklé, 2011). These empirical observations will surely disappoint the prophets of social disintegration: social life is not in decline but is undergoing a transformation.
I believe the major change to be a privatization of social life. By this term I refer on the one hand to a shift from outdoor to indoor activities, as many practices that previously occurred in public space have migrated to the domestic sphere, and on the other hand to a tightening of social networks, which have become more centered around close intimate relationships. This means that mingling with strangers in public settings has become rarer, while domestic and private socializing has expanded. This evolution is palpable among adults, who spend less time with neighbors and more time with close kin and friends at home, for example (Wellman, 1999), but also in youth culture, where the advent of computers and digital leisure has contributed to a switch from “street culture” to a genuine “bedroom culture” (Bovill and Livingstone, 2001; Livingstone, 2002).
Online dating takes this privatization into the realms of love and sex and accentuates it. This may come as a surprise to observers, who surmise, from the large numbers of users and their public profiles, that these platforms are a new form of public space. Online dating, however, is radically different from meeting at a club, in a bar, or in any other type of public venue. First, the platforms are accessible from home, and hence they turn meeting a partner into a domestic activity. Second, far from having a public setting, interactions are strictly dyadic, being based on one-to-one conversations that cannot be seen or overheard by a third party. Third and most importantly, online dating operates a clear separation between social networks and sexual networks. Whereas previously people met partners in ordinary social settings and often through people they knew, online dating involves circumventing one’s social circles.
As Michael Rosenfeld and his colleagues have stressed, this means “disintermediating your friends” in dating (Rosenfeld et al., 2019). But the historical movement at work here is much broader. More than just circumventing family and friends, these platforms operate a sharp distinction between dating and all forms of sociability, turning the former into a specific social activity, with its own space and time. This is not a mere displacement of other meeting venues, it is a radical shift in the way we approach intimate relationships and organize social life.
This shift from public to private dating was first observed in the LGBT community. Gay and lesbian populations in the western world have seen a decline in community spaces, which earlier were important meeting venues, in favor of online encounters. In Europe the trend is particularly clear among gay men, for whom “the emergence of the internet coincides with lower attendance in spaces that combine sociability and meeting partners” (Velter, 2007, p. 82). This online migration has been harshly criticized by scholars such as Timothy James Dean, who sees it as a “troubling privatization” in which real-life face-to-face encounters have been replaced by solitary sex in front of a computer (Dean, 2009, p. 177). Others, such as Kane Race, have criticized this nostalgic viewpoint, stressing that gay hookup apps are “a significant source of pleasure, connection, eroticism and intimacy” (Race, 2015, p. 256). In any case, online dating participates in a general trend of individualization of homosexual experiences. As many scholars have pointed out, the greater acceptance of homosexuality has weakened the ties of community experience and has made some, often young lesbians and gays, distance themselves from what is sometimes called “the gay scene” (Adam, 1999; Rivière et al., 2015). Sex has become more private, as people meet more often outside collective community structures.
A similar transformation is now underway in the heterosexual population. With the expansion of online dating, the search for romantic and sexual partners is no longer within the bounds of ordinary life. The social surrounding is stripped not only of its matchmaking function but also of control over nascent relationships. This privatization of dating has two major implications: it plays a crucial, though often overlooked role in the success of online dating; and it creates an environment where external control is loosened. The present book will take
