So in what ways might meeting someone online benefit the single man or woman that meeting under more traditional circumstances may lack?

Possible pro’s

You can find out what each others interests are, family history, preferences, profession etc in a few email exchanges and gather more information in the space of a few days than you could ever hope to gather in a casual meeting which may then lead to a date.

You can vet many people all at once without any risk of ‘cheating’ or being unfaithful or putting all your eggs in one basket.

You can change your mind without ever having met the person and do not have to face the consequences after you reject their advances. You can just block and delete.

You can of course remain anonymous.

Possible disadvantages

While meeting someone you have only known on the internet could be compared to being no more informative than meeting someone randomly in a bar or club etc, there is still that missing element of body language, which may give you an intuitive sense of whether that person may be safe or not and of course the all important sense of chemistry is totally lacking.

The person you are chatting with online with may not be who they claim to be. They could be telling you they are a 27 year old male and infact be a 15yr old school boy or vice versa. This DOES happen. Some men/women go onto dating sites with pictures they have copied from the Internet and then lure women/men into online sex chats or phone calls. They never intend to meet any of the women/men so they themselves have nothing to lose by putting up fake pictures of themselves.

If you are dating online or contemplating it, play safe! NEVER give out real names or location. You can tell them you are using ‘screen names’ rather than lying and tell them no addresses unless you meet and you decide to take the matter further. If chatting live on msn, ask for cam evidence that they are who they say they are. If they have no cam, then be aware that if you commit yourself to exchanging intimate details that you may be talking to someone not remotely like that which you expect and only you can decide whether to continue.

Ideally no one under the age of 18 should consider dating via the Internet as that carries with it too many risks to mention.

Play safe!