Technology and Dating

Students at BYU-Idaho look down upon the use of technology in dating and have negative
experiences with it. However, the use of technology has become viewed as common among some
students, leading to skewed expectations of technologys role in dating from student to student.
These results were found by evaluating student responses as being positive, negative or neutral
for the first question. The second questions was categories by topic, since all responses were designed
to be negative. The categories are loss of communication, stalker/abuse, miscommunication or
misrepresentation, preferred contact to be face to face and a neutral response.

BYU-Idaho Students' Views on

"Texting and Dating"
60%
50%
40%

30%
20%
10%
0%
Positive

The majority of
students critiqued
social media
interactions as being
inferior to face to
face interactions.
Many of the
experiences sorted
into the other
categories would
have potentially been
avoided if the
interaction had taken
place face to face. For
the sake of this study,
the obvious problem
is being examined most.

Negative

Neutral

Out of those surveyed, most had a

negative view on the topics texting and
dating when viewed together. Some
common thoughts from the students
were that it is stupid or lame to have
the two concepts together. The neutral
comments referred to dating apps and
textings occasional necessity. Some
comments also taken as neutral include
terms such as sexting and norm since
they do not have an obvious connotation
to them. Positive comments were few,
but included such words as really
helpful and interacting. Overall, the
students think it is a bad idea to mix
dating and texting.

BYU-Idaho Students' Worst Experiences with

Social Media and Dating
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%

Some of the worst experiences were due to a loss of communication. They had found someone
that they were truly interested in, but errors and unexplained loss of communication left some
wondering what would have happened. The technology itself was to blame in these cases. About 16% of
the cases involved someone becoming overly attached after only a short time or using social media to
hurt others relationships. 26% said that either the other person turned out to be different than what
their social media interaction suggested or that some things that they have said have been taken in a
way other than how they meant it. The most common response was that they preferred face to face
interaction more than any digital permutation. About a quarter of the response simply said that they
had not had any negative experiences or even sometimes any experiences at all to contribute to the list.
The survey clearly shows that most BYU-Idaho students prefer face to face interaction over
social media or texting when it comes to dating. However, since most have had a negative experience
with these digital means of communication, most are involved in such communication despite their
disdain of it.