Like all other forms of human interaction, dating has undergone a revolution in the digital age. With the advent of dating apps such as Tinder, Grindr, and Bumble, your chances of finding a couple who first met in a bar or a club are growing slimmer every day. A study conducted by smartphone maker HTC found that in 2016, 37% of Britons reported that they met their significant other on one of these apps.

However, it’s not just the process of finding a significant other that’s becoming increasingly digitized. Today, the modern relationship is one that is primarily mediated through the use of the internet as the use of social media becomes essential to our communication. Of course, as with any discussion of internet-based communication, the increasing ‘virtualisation’ of relationships has its critics. One article published in Vanity Fair went so far as to refer to it as the “dating apocalypse”. It’s easy to imagine how the detachment that the internet causes can rob romance of some of its magic, and many people believe that our increasing reliance on social media in our relationships is depersonalising them. Are we sacrificing intimacy in the name of convenience?

“There is always the pressure to be ‘plugged in’ to the vast virtual network of the internet”

As someone who met his boyfriend on tinder and lives a total of 5449km away from him, I’m inclined to disagree. It seems pessimistic to me to suggest that my relationship with my boyfriend is somehow superficial simply because we met online and rely on the internet to keep in touch. The phrase ‘keep in touch’ contains in itself a certain irony, as the main effect of the internet is the removal of the presence of a physical body. This physicality is often placed at the core of all sexual and romantic interaction, but it’s the internet’s lack of this very aspect of relationships that makes it so valuable as a tool.

The digital age has provided us with the capacity to always have our partner ‘in our pocket’, so to speak, as with the click of a button on our phones we can speak to them and even locate them. While to many people this may seem akin to something from an episode of Black Mirror, I find it presents a kind of happy paradox. As I’ve mentioned, one of the key advantages of the internet is that people in long-distance relationships (such as myself) can use it to stay in touch with ease. Essentially, one of its key benefits for many is its ability to connect people across geographical distances – in a sense, the usefulness of the internet really hinges upon a lack of physical proximity. However, every time I see that my boyfriend is online, it doesn’t feel like a reminder of this. Instead, it’s like having him in the room. The internet allows people to move beyond the geographical limits placed on physical bodies and creates its own kind of pseudo-geographical immediacy. As the internet moves society from the material to the virtual, increasingly sophisticated representations of human bodies give us an opportunity to embrace a degree of connectivity never seen before in human history.

“The internet acts as a space outside the gaze of a largely heteronormative society”

That being said, as the internet becomes more and more proficient in creating the illusion that your partner is always right there with you, the question begins to present itself: would we want to be with our partners every minute of every day? One of the inevitable downsides of increased connectivity is that continuous availability begins to put pressure on us to stay in constant contact with each other. There is always the pressure to be ‘plugged in’ to the vast virtual network of the internet. For relationships, this can obviously lead to a degree of strain. In a romantic setting, this pressure can quickly become an obligation, as a message left on read or a missed ‘good morning text’ suddenly develops into a cause for concern. The emergence of tracking features like ‘snap map’ only exacerbates this issue. A number of times in the past I’ve seen couples argue when one spotted the other in an unexpected location. It appears that, in many cases, constant access to your partner comes at the price of privacy.

While the internet can make privacy within a relationship difficult, web-based communication has a certain discretion that can prove vital for some. This particular benefit moves beyond sometimes saving the average person from having to witness to gratuitous PDA (public displays of affection), as in queer dating and relationships the internet acts as a space outside the gaze of a largely heteronormative society. For some, using apps like grindr and tinder is often the most effective and even the safest way of meeting people. Our current society is not one in which a gay person can go up to any person of the same sex in any bar and buy them a drink without any fear. Heterosexuals still have privileged access to the modern spaces of courtship, and so dating apps have provided an excellent method of adaptation for queer people.

What the internet does best is provide an alternative space for relationships, one that subverts material geographies on levels beyond simple distance. This alternative space condenses the miles and kilometres of actual space, and more importantly acts as a method of escaping society’s heteronormative attempts to police its romantic and sexual spaces. Regardless of the stresses that come with the double-edged sword of the internet’s immense connective capabilities, this virtual space is becoming essential to our formation and maintenance of romance. As society continues to venture farther into the digital era, it seems to me that if there’s one thing that shouldn’t get left behind, it’s love