1-23-13: The End of Love

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A spate of trend stories in the media has us wondering: Is the Internet ruining everything?

A New York Times story called “The End of Courtship” says young people don’t go to dinner and a movie anymore—they just text each other and hang out: “Raised in the age of so-called ‘hookup culture,’ millennials are subverting the rules of courtship.”

The Atlantic’s story “A Million First Dates” chronicles the failure of an immature jock to find someone to marry on Match.com, and concludes that “the rise of online dating will mean an overall decrease in commitment.”

And that’s just the so-called adults. A new app called Snapchat has generated a media frenzy over its potential for teen sexting.

So—has the internet killed modesty, and courtship, and monogamy, and maybe even…love itself?

Today, we ask our monthly social media analysts Nathan Jurgenson and P.J. Rey. Nathan and P.J. are Ph.D. candidates in sociology at the University of Maryland, and they blog at Cyborgology.