The Development of Online and Offline Romantic Relationships: A Turning Point Study by Sophia W. McDowell
While mass media sources have tended to focus on sensationalistic examples of online relationships—cases of gender switching, spousal betrayal, and deception of communication partners—existing studies about the development and quality of online relationships have found that most such relationships are somewhat ordinary and relatively similar to those developed offline (Parks & Floyd, 1996; Parks & Roberts, 1998). Of the online relationships reported in Parks and Floyd’s (1996) study of 24 newsgroups, no significant difference was found between the number of same-sex and opposite-sex relationships. Relationships ranged in duration from less than a month to six years, though most (69.6%) were less than a year old. Over half of the participants reported that they communicated with their partners on a weekly basis. Comparisons between participants who did and did not have online personal relationships showed that most demographic factors were not related with the likelihood of developing personal relationships online (though women were more likely than men to have formed online relationships). The best predictor of whether someone developed online personal relationships was the amount of time (s)he spent participating in newsgroups. In addition, online relationships seem to be experienced as being quite close and intimate. Using measures of interdependence, breadth and depth of interaction, interpersonal predictability and understanding, levels of personalized ways of communication, commitment, and convergence of social networks to determine level of relational development, Parks and Floyd (1996) found that many online relationships scored highly on each of the scales.
In a similar study of relational development that looked at participants in real-time, text-based virtual environments called MOO’s (Multi-User Dimensions, Object Oriented), Parks and Roberts (1998) found results similar to those reported in the Parks and Floyd (1996) newsgroup study. The majority of the respondents rated their online relationships above the midpoint of nearly every measure of level of relational development, and the online relationships reported by participants did not differ significantly in terms of breadth, depth and code-change dimensions from their offline counterparts.