Abstract Online dating has become an increasingly popular way to meet potential romantic partners. Young women experience a complex interplay between traditional gender roles and elevated risks in online dating. Our project aimed to explore young women’s self-representation in online dating, with the research question, “How do young women conceptualise and represent the ‘self’ in online dating?” . An exploratory qualitative research design was adopted, encompassing semi-structured interviews with 10 participants analysed via Reflexive Thematic Analysis. Sampling was purposive and snowballing, resulting in a final sample of participants aged between 19 and 30 years who identified as female and had engaged in online dating within the last six months. Interviews lasted 52 min on average. To ensure quality and trustworthiness, the research team utilised various quality procedures. Three themes with multiple aspects were constructed which encompassed feelings of (un)safety, social norms in online dating, and selling your best ‘self’. Unsafety was related to deception in online dating, physical danger, and the work required to stay safe. Social norms involved the normalisation of online dating, stigma, and social assistance with self-representation. Selling your best ‘self’ examined the marketable ‘self’ and conflicts with the values of authenticity. Our study has potential implications regarding responsibility for safety and may indicate some support for the idea of an overarching framework as beneficial to understanding the vast theoretical frameworks in online dating. Further research into how different subgroups of young women self-represent in online dating is likely to yield more specific understandings.
Due to the pervasiveness of this unsafety, young women had learned to understand the safety of the ‘self’ as their responsibility and modified and limited their self-representation accordingly.
multiple participant accounts support the interpretation within a small, self-selected Australian interview sample
A unique cognitive dissonance experienced by young women in online dating was observed, whereby increased normalisation coexists with persistent stigma.
coexistence is described, but a women-only sample without comparators cannot establish demographic uniqueness
the internal conflict between authenticity and desirability was not always able to be rectified and was described by some young women as a reason for leaving the online dating medium – or market.
the small interview sample provides only one explicit participant example of conflict-related disengagement
Derived from the full evaluation — not a separate score.
Strengths
The methods describe interview development, recording, transcription checks, semantic and latent coding, thematic mapping, memos, and team review. These details make the analytic process assessable.
↳ Method—Materials, Procedure, and Data analysis
Extended excerpts across the three themes show how participants connect guarded disclosure, advice from trusted others, and profile marketing to their self-representation.
↳ Findings, all three themes
The Discussion compares its interpretations with research on safety work, authenticity, and commodification, and explicitly recognises mixed findings about normalisation and stigma.
↳ Discussion, literature-comparison paragraphs
Limitations
Claims of unique cognitive dissonance and distinctive self-presentation strategies cannot establish differences from men or older women without direct comparative evidence.
↳ Discussion, cognitive dissonance and foggy-mirror paragraphs
The Discussion does not explain how self-selection through Facebook and existing networks constrains conclusions about young women generally. It also leaves the lack of a comparator unaddressed when interpreting demographic distinctiveness.
↳ Method—Participants; Discussion
Safety work, friends' assistance with profiles, authenticity–desirability tensions, and self-commodification are already represented in the literature cited by the paper. The principal addition is their integration within this sample.
↳ Discussion, comparisons with Gillett, Ellison, Degen and Kleeberg-Niepage, Adamczyk, and Hobbs
The methods document interview collection and iterative reflexive thematic analysis, and the Findings provide participant excerpts across all three themes. These features support the descriptive account, although member-check outcomes and the effects of researcher positioning on specific interpretations remain incompletely exposed. The central contribution is integration of established themes rather than a substantial new explanatory result. Repeated uniqueness claims exceed the noncomparative design, while the Discussion does not interpret the decisive recruitment and comparator boundaries. Safety by Design provides a plausible application pathway, but the proposed interventions remain untested.
Nabu’s assessment, alongside the field’s view.
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Sound3.5
Confidence highThe study integrates safety, social validation, and marketability into an account of young women's online-dating self-representation. Its components predominantly confirm established findings, limiting the advance to contextual integration.
Interview collection and reflexive thematic analysis are documented through transcription checks, iterative coding, memos, thematic maps, and team reflection. Member-check outcomes and concrete effects of positionality remain insufficiently exposed, while independent coding is not required for this analytic approach.
The research question and three-theme structure make the argument traceable to participant excerpts. Repeated comparative claims of uniqueness materially exceed what a single noncomparative sample can establish.
The paper engages directly relevant literature and acknowledges mixed findings and selected subgroup boundaries. It does not trace the implications of self-selected network recruitment or absent comparators for its broader demographic claims, requiring the 2.8 ceiling.
Lower confidence on Contribution, Methodological Rigour — domain match limited.
No concerns4 of 4 checks
The reported numbers and statistics are consistent with the stated results.
Ethics approval, informed consent, competing interests, and secure data handling are declared. Restricted data availability has an explicit participant confidentiality and safety rationale.
Conflict of interest: declared · Ethics approval: declared · Data availability: not stated
58 references in manuscript 47 of 47 checkable references found in an index 11 have no canonical index record — counted, but not index-checkable 2 references confirmed by manual review
References not verified automatically are resolved manually within 24 hours.
No retraction or expression of concern found in Crossref (includes Retraction Watch).
Sources: Crossref (incl. Retraction Watch) ✓
Where this paper’s evidence sits on the path from initial observation to real-world use.
The evidence remains at exploratory observation and mechanism-characterisation stage. No safety intervention, implementation strategy, or practical effect is evaluated.
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