Stories...Wemer

Will Wemer
Shaker Heights HS - Ohio

www.FindMeADate.com

You can find a date with the click of a mouse
But will this person really become your spouse?

Watch out, Chuck Woolery, there's a brand-new dating game in town! Ever since the dawn of the Internet, surfers across the country have found themselves getting involved in Internet relationships. The invention that revolutionized the media industry in the 1990s has become a source for lonely single people to meet other singles and chat with each other.

Mary Tomlinson, an HSJI student from Lafayette, Ind., in Summer 2001, has experienced a relationship over the web in the past. Tomlinson's sister set her up with her friend from Frankfort, Ind.

The Jefferson High School student describes her relationship as good at first. But, the relationship went sour when the date made sexual advances during their chat sessions. "[The relationship] wasn't one of the best relationships I've ever had," Tomlinson said.

Colleen Comer, a student from Assumption High School in Louisville, Ky, has not had a relationship herself over the Internet. However, her father, Doug, met his future fiancée through the Internet provider, America Online (AOL).

Comer's father was viewing AOL profiles in October 1998, when he stumbled upon the profile of Debbie Hearing. The two talked for a month using AOL's Instant Messenger, then met each other in person on Halloween.

The HSJI student was a little uneasy about her father meeting Hearing over the Internet. "It was kind of weird at first," Comer said. "That doesn't seem prudent to me."

A common place for singles to meet is a chat room, where Internet users can drop in and talk to groups of people at one time. Often, these group chats become personal, and two room members connect and a relationship blossoms.

Anna Norris, a student at Wayne High School in Fort Wayne, Ind., was in a chat room three years ago when she met a boy from California. The two carried on a three- to four-month Internet relationship.

However, the relationship never truly materialized and the two drifted apart. Looking back on the situation, Norris said those four months were "a stupid mistake I made. The person lived across the country."

Even though Internet relationships seem innocent, the results of some Internet relationships can be costly. In February 2000, Kelly Starling of Ebony Online published an article concerning the damages on online relationships.

In the article, Michael Brown, the creator of the online service Blacksingles.com, warned future Internet singles to beware of certain figures on the Internet. Brown warned that since a person's character is based only on what a person says, there is plenty of room for lying.

"You can encounter [on the Internet] men and women whose real purpose is getting money from women: con artists," Brown said.

Along with con artists, Ebony Online reports in an article "Ten Rules of Online Dating," the Internet has been known to be populated with sexual predators and kidnappers, trying to lure people, especially children, into a trap through an Internet relationship.

Ryan Gunterman, a senior at Indiana University in Bloomington, was a lab assistant this summer at IUB. Gunterman advises parents to take an active role in protecting children with child blocks to Internet connections and web pages.

Yet, when it comes down to protecting one's self from Internet dangers, Gunterman simply advises, "Don't talk to anybody you don't know.

"Parents always told you, 'Don't talk to strangers,'" Gunterman said.

"That applies to computers too."