When we were explaining to each other why we came to Iowa State in one of my classes the first week, one guy said he moved to Iowa to live with a girl he met online. All I could think was, “Man, this guy has guts!”

It seems that not only is online dating becoming extremely popular in today’s culture, it is also becoming a more comfortable topic to discuss.

People proclaim that online dating is simpler and relieves the stress of dating. For people who are unable to leave their house or who spend long hours at work, this may be true. However, amongst college students, online dating should ultimately be a last resort.

Before I go too far, I should confess that, at one point in my life, I met people online. I was on facethejury.com, a site where your picture is rated on a number scale. Once you have made a profile, though, you can chat with other members and search for people based on age, dating status or location.

I have made good friends with people I met online and many of them go to Iowa State. Speaking from experience, it can be entertaining at times to get on one of the online chatting sites and start up a random conversation, as long as this is not your only method of meeting new people. Unfortunately, for many people, online chatting sites become addictive as the expectation of meeting a significant other begins to increase.

Online chatting sites are also just plain annoying. The sites often give too many people the opportunity to get in contact with you.

Because you are not having face-to-face contact, it seems people forget the rules of courtesy and people can sometimes be extremely rude on these sites.

One result of this is a large amount of sexual comments. The amount of people who instant message you asking for a/s/l (age, sex and location) is ridiculously large.

It seems that many people are so completely desperate for the attention of another human being that they will IM a person without knowing any background information about them.

It’s a swing in the dark to find someone who you will connect with. In the end, finding people online can be a continual process of filtering out people who are not worth your time.

This act of filtering out people brings me to another point. There are so many dating and chat sites available now. These sites give people the chance to possibly meet hundreds of people at once. It sounds great at first, but this large number of people can be overwhelming for some. You will start to see that it would take more and more time out of your life to handle the inflow of instant messages.

It is much more efficient and less of a headache in the real world to meet a limited number of people from day to day.

There are so many opportunities in college to meet people — this gives you no excuse for resorting to online dating. College students have the best options of meeting people compared to other groups. We live in a community where most everyone has the same goals in mind: study during the week and relax and have fun on the weekends. This means the odds of connecting with people are very high.

The classroom is one place to meet someone new. If you are lonely, it is not difficult to strike up a conversation with the person in the seat next to you.

You can talk about anything. Complaining about the professor or the class is usually a great universal conversation starter for class time.

Another way to meet people is to get involved in different activities. Most people meet others through mutual friends as well.

If you are sincerely curious about the opportunity to meet a new and interesting person online, I encourage you to give it a shot. There is a slight chance that you could meet someone who fits this description, but most likely you will end up disappointed.

Like anything in life, problems arise when your expectations are too high. People who you will find in cyberspace are the same type of people you will find in “the real world.” If you are meeting jerks or no-good, lazy bums, chances are you will continue to find these people.

Your best chance of meeting someone interesting is to get out of your room and away from your computer.

You will find that meeting people face to face is much more rewarding and time efficient in the end.