Most students’ parents went to the same college, met through a mutual friend or frequented the same hangouts. But this generation may be telling their children a different story about their first meeting

It may begin with an online dating site.

For the coming generation, this is one scenario children may not find out of the ordinary. More than an estimated 120,000 marriages a year result from online dating services, according to 2007 report by Online Dating Magazine, a consumer report company for the industry.

Web sites began experimenting with dating sites in the mid-’90s, when people were more cynical about the process, associating it with the desperation that led people to purchase personal ads in newspapers, said Joe Tracy, publisher of Online Dating Magazine.

But by the year 2000 the social stigma declined significantly and people started to accept online services as a viable dating alternative, Tracy said. Now Online Dating Magazine estimates that more than 20 million people use at least one online dating service each month.

“There has to be a changing mindset and culture in order to accept online dating,” Tracy said.

Most people know someone who has tried online dating, and many new users decide to try it based on a friend’s recommendation, Tracy said. According to the 2006 Pew Internet & American Life Project Report, 31 percent of Americans know someone who has used an online dating service.

Andrea Baker, a professor of sociology at OU’s Lancaster campus, tracked the relationships of 89 people who met online. Using her findings, she explains factors that contribute to online relationship success or failure in her book Double Click: Romance And Commitment Among Online Couples.

While one-third of the couples in Baker’s study met through dating Web sites, her research showed couples who met in more “naturalistic” settings, such as discussion groups for common interests, seemed to have more long-term durability, Baker said.

Truthful communication and self-presentation also contributed significantly to the couple’s success, including honesty about physical appearance, she said. The longer the two people communicated before their first face-to-face meeting, the better the encounter, Baker said.

Tracy Whitmore, a senior social work major, decided to try online dating last April, after encountering few datable guys at the bars. Whitmore signed up for a profile on Yahoo! Personals, which costs $25.99 for one month.

“I mean I don’t want to say it’s a desperation thing, but you know,” Whitmore said. “I guess it’s just another way to meet people.”

After a month she met her current boyfriend, who is also an OU student, Whitmore said. Because they have different majors she doubts they would have met without the site, Whitmore said.

“I would have never met him if I wouldn’t have used online dating,” she said. “Honestly it was kind of a long shot.”

The couple has been dating for five months, but when people ask how they met, they usually reply that they go to school together, Whitmore said.

“We really don’t want the whole world to know that we met online dating,” she said.