Online Dating: Good Thing or Bad Thing?

Online dating, once a fringe and stigmatized activity, is now over a $2 billion industry. Over 40 million Americans have given online dating a try, and over a third of the American couples married between 2005 and 2012 met online.

The first prominent online dating site was Match.com, which launched in 1995. eHarmony started in 2000, OkCupid in 2004, and more recently, a wave of mobile people-swiping apps, like Tinder and Hinge, have become wildly popular.

But is this a positive development or something to be concerned about? Is online dating making the world better and dating more effective, or is something important being lost or sacrificed as a result? The way the current trend is heading, what will dating be like in 2030, and will that be a better or worse time to be on the dating market than 1995? Ideally, what would dating look like in 2030?