Online dating: Studying dating patterns

According to Discovery News, Thomas said these online avenues have opened up an eligible dating pool particularly for certain groups that might not have as many offline romantic opportunities.

"Online dating is used most by subpopulations that don't have a great number of potential partners available to meet in their everyday life," Thomas said.

"The rate of partnering doesn't seem to be changing. When we look at data on women's sexuality over the past few decades, they seem to be no more likely to be in a relationship now than before," he stated.

Rutgers communications assistant professor Jennifer Gibbs has studied online dating patterns and has noticed that people feel a tug-of-war between creating ideal profiles to stand out from the crowd or building more accurate profiles that risk getting lost in the enormous online dating market.