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But not in a bad way, Ms Jarvis, a representative of online dating website RSVP.com.au, said.
“Trawling through a bar or relying on meeting through friends, it’s not working for people so they’re turning to quite an efficient, technological-driven way of dating.
“They’re making compensations because they’re busy and having to turn to efficient means of meeting.”
As online dating nears its 10th anniversary, Ms Jarvis said it allowed participants to have pre-prepared talking points on their first dates.
This eliminated much of the uncertainty of dating – including awkward silences.
“The benefit of online dating is you can be really picky,” Ms Jarvis said.
“It is about efficiency but that’s a benefit: Things like, do they smoke or not, do they have pets or not, do they have kids or not.”
Ms Jarvis said more than100,000 West Australians – particularly men – had posted online dating profiles.
WA’s 11:9 male-female ratio was “probably a function of the mining industry”.
She said “a combination of technology and social factors” was behind online dating’s popularity.
“More people are single, divorce rates have gone up, people are working longer hours, so all those time-poor arguments come into play,” Ms Jarvis said.
“People are generally harder to meet (and) in the last two or three years there’s been a lot more acceptance around blind dating.
“And being close to the internet has certainly helped.”
She likened meeting via email to starting romances with letter writing.
“It’s funny, online is a bit of a full circle,” she said.
“Email communication is a modern way of almost, like, a return to writing letters.”
People had often exchanged dozens of emails and spent hours conversing via instant messaging before meeting each other.
“In a way, I think, between online messenger, mobile phones and text, you actually can get to know the person a lot faster with technology than you might on three or four dates in a traditional sense,” she said.
Hence the efficiency.
“I think these days so much of our lives are about efficiency,” Ms Jarvis said.
“You do everything online and you’re used to being very efficient with your time, and particularly your social time – it is the area of your life that tends to cop the biggest beating.
“I think it is a tragedy that so much eats into our lives but I think that the growth in the membership base highlights the yearning for someone to share your life with is certainly not dead.”
Ms Jarvis said interstate migrants and over-30 singles whose friends were “all tied up in long-term relationships” were also using dating websites to find friends.
“It’s becoming more of a networking environment rather than dating,” she said.
“I think it’s a function of your options becoming more limited as you get (older).”
She said the recently developed ‘speed-dating’ – in which participants talk to each other for six-minutes at a time before moving on – was also proving to be more about meeting friends than dating.
“Speed dating is more about social networking,” Ms Jarvis said.
“With these events we often find a lot of women hooking up afterwards and having a chat.”
There was “big demand” for ‘speed-dating’ from over-60s.
“(They) just want to go out and meet a whole heap of people and have fun,” Ms Jarvis said.
Ms Jarvis said February was the most active month in online dating, with 50,000 ‘kisses’ – initial advances – on Valentine’s Day alone.
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