The master's thesis focuses on exploring young people's perceptions of romantic relationships, their entry into such relationships, and the accompanying challenges. It investigates how the use of online dating applications contributes to this, the experiences emerging adults have with these applications, and why they choose to use them. The theoretical part first explains the period of emerging adulthood, developmental stages, and romantic relationships during this period. It also describes entering romantic relationships through the internet and provides an overview of the most commonly used applications and platforms for online dating, including their advantages and disadvantages.
In the empirical part, semi-structured interviews were conducted to gather the experiences of 8 emerging adults. The aim of the research was to gain insight into how emerging adults perceive romantic relationships, how they enter them, the challenges and fears they face, as well as their experiences with online dating applications and the reasons for their use. The results, analyzed using grounded theory, showed that young adults perceive romantic relationships as more superficial and mostly enter them through social networks and online dating applications. They face challenges such as dishonesty and lack of seriousness, as well as fears of vulnerability and intimacy. Emerging adults have positive experiences using online dating applications, recognizing several advantages but also being aware of the disadvantages. The use of online dating applications is still accompanied by stigma and various prejudices, which are slowly decreasing. The most common reasons for using these applications are the influence of friends, curiosity, and boredom, while they abandon them due to unserious, short conversations and a loss of interest in using them.
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