Online dating versus conventional dating around Valentines day. (Photo by Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images)

BLOOMINGTON – Valentine’s Day might bring on some feelings of the need to have a romantic partner.

As computers become cheaper, smaller and more powerful, and the Internet grows and grows, a new generation of dating websites have emerged.

Illinois State University social psychology professor Susan Sprecher is co-author of “Online Dating: A Critical Analysis from the Perspective of Psychological Science.” She said the urge to find someone on Valentine’s Day comes from the media.

“People are primed to think about it because of media coverage, because of cards in stores and so forth,” Sprecher said. “So I do think that people who aren’t in a relationship around Valentine’s Day think about it more, and think about, ‘Should I be?’ or ‘Should I try harder?’”

Dating sites provide some combination of access, communication and matchmaking all in one place. Sprecher said there are some differences in the beginning of a relationship from online dating compared to the conventional way.

“The differences really occur in the beginning, the process is different and in terms to back to Valentine’s Day,” Sprecher said. “If someone thought they wanted to be in a relationship, having access to online dating makes it efficient.”

According to the article Sprecher co-authored, the first generation began with Match.com launched in 1995.

Sprecher said some of these sites may be leading users to believe in the concept of one soul mate that doesn’t exist.

“That can be somewhat dysfunctional because then if things go wrong in the relationship and you thought they were your soul mate, then you may end it right away, because you think you need to find your true soul mate when in fact relationships need work and there probably isn’t such a thing as a true soul mate,” she said.

Sprecher said the biggest demographic for online dating is generally middle-aged adults.

“It’s people who end up in regions of the country, work certain types of work or have other constraints like they have children, they can’t go to single bars at night or something, that might lead certain people to be more likely to use it because this is a way to look for partners,” she said.

Sprecher said with the overall traffic on sites like these, it may be overwhelming for the individual going through all the profiles.

“That can lead to a sense of being overwhelmed and than can lead to bad choices because you start to not be sure on what you should emphasize on and narrowing the pool further.”

Sprecher also said that even though convenient, online dating does have some downsides.

“One downside that it leads to a shopping mentality and that you treat people as some degree of a commodity and you get treated to some degree as a commodity at least at first and again, I don’t think this occurs when you decide this is a person you want to date,” she said.

Amanda Pigott contributed to this story.