Some students may have met their partners through Facebook, but now the social media site is launching a feature meant for matchmaking.
Facebook Dating launched in Canada on Nov. 8, after having piloted in Columbia.
Instead of being its own app—like Messenger—Facebook Dating is a feature that users can access through the main Facebook app, and opt-in to if they’d like.
Ava Vahidi, a second-year student at Carleton University, said she doesn’t see the feature being used by people who are university age.
“I think for older people, middle-aged people who are pretty active on Facebook . . . it’s going to be useful for them,” she said.
The feature will display users’ first names and their ages—like Tinder—and match users who aren’t friends yet, based on what they have in common.
Additionally, Facebook has added a tool called “Second Look”—similar to Tinder’s paid feature where you can revisit previous matches, and an option for users to pause matching for those who want to take a break without deleting their profile.
But there’s a twist.
Facebook Dating only lets users send one message awaiting a response, and conversations through the feature will be text only.
Allison Lunianga, a fourth-year law student at Carleton, said her concerns would be that connecting Facebook to a dating app may allow the person you’re talking to find your actual profile
“They can very easily go to Facebook find your name and find out everything more about you,” she said. “I think it’s just becoming too intimate, too close to home.”
Lunianga said Facebook is a relatively family friendly platform and to have that act as dating app is “odd.”
“People separate social media and dating applications for the reason that they want to keep it somewhat private and anonymous.”
Facebook has 1.49 billion daily users on Facebook and 2.27 as of September, 2018, according to its company information page, but there is currently no information available on how many users have signed up for the dating feature.
Cheryl Harasymchuk, a psychology professor at Carleton University and an expert on intimate relationships, says Facebook is in a unique position to make its dating platform successful.
She said, the platform has advantages like being easy of use, convenient, and a potentially greater “pool of available options,” because of Facebook’s already-existing presence as a social media platform.
On the flip side, Harasymchuk said in online dating, the face-to-face interaction might be missing.
“[It’s] a key determinant of interpersonal interaction in terms of sorting out chemistry and determining people’s facial reactions,” she said.
Harasymchuk added that some research suggests that online dating might promote a ‘shopping mode mentality’ for potential mates.
“With the shopping mode mentality, it can objectify the potential mates and it might reduce the chance of a commitment to the relationship,” she said. “But these are just some of the ways that they can be disadvantageous, but under the right conditions you know, online dating can lead to the development of long-term relationships.”
—With files from Mike Gould
Photo by Marieta-rita Osezua
