News & Insights

Modern Love Judged by the Gadget in your Pocket

Cuddled up in my Snuggie™ blanket over the weekend, I flipped the pages of my February 2010 issue of Elle Magazine and came across a survey about iPhone users that consumer electronics specialists, Retrevo, conducted called the Gadgetology report.  This online survey featured in the Modern Love section of the magazine, consisted of 445 iPhone and BlackBerry owners, non-Retrevo users, distributed across gender, age, income and location in the United States. Although a small sample was used for this survey, it showed that single people aren’t only concerned with how smart their date is, but how smart their date’s smartphone is. Read full survey.

Below are a few responses from the survey:

  • iPhone users consider themselves to be more intellectual, extroverted, and media savvy than users of other devices.
  • iPhone users negatively judge people who have out-of-date gadgets and, furthermore consider someone who has cool gadgets to be more attractive as a potential dating partner than someone with a college education.
  • One in three iPhone users has broken up with his or her significant via text or e-mail.

I’ve been out of the dating scene for over 6.5 years now but I remember how cool it was when I got my first “text” message on my pager/beeper back in the day. A “hello” or “73110” read upside down via pager was the coolest thing ever when my now-hubby would send them to me. HA! Now THAT is ancient dating my friends! 

Please don’t take the responses from this survey seriously. Instead, think about how technology has become ingrained in our cultural fabric. Maybe these smartphones are smarter than us afterall. So if you have gone on a lot of first dates, and not so many second dates, you may want to reevaluate the gadget in your pocket.