Have you ever logged into your email account and found you have received several messages about meeting someone online? Or have you turned on the TV to see some picture-perfect couple boasting about how they found each other through some website and it was a match made in Heaven?

It’s pretty crazy to me that there are websites where you can meet someone who is your age, religion, ethnicity, or even someone who shares your more intimate interests. You can learn all you would want about someone with a simple click of the mouse. With all these Internet love connections running around, I often ask myself if true romance, like chivalry, is dead.

According to eHarmony.com, they have more than 20 million registered users and that number is continuously growing. In a 2009 survey by Harris Interactive for eHarmony, about 5 percent of marriages in the United States are comprised of eHarmony patrons.

Match.com has been revolutionizing online dating since 1995. NIU has even been added to the website datemyschool.com, which offers single people who are students or alumni the opportunity to meet someone from their university.

When did humanity’s social skills dwindle to the point that people need to meet someone online? Since when was the old fashioned way of meeting someone at Molly’s or Lord Stanley’s and finding the courage to ask them out replaced with hours of creeping through profiles and scanning picture after picture to find “the one?”

First of all, in my opinion, it’s a little freaky that people who join these sites open themselves up to such scrutiny by complete strangers. Second, what happened to the need to ask someone about themself to learn more as opposed to reading and memorizing his or her dating profile? It’s almost as if the need for first date conversation has been nullified. It seems like there is more typing than talking in dating these days.

I understand that there are people with careers or other obligations which prevent them from having the freedom to go out there and meet someone. I also understand that there are people who are incredibly shy and need their computer as a tool for expression, but do these select few people need to set the global dating standards?

On Valentine’s Day will we be getting flowers and chocolates or e-cards and Facebook messages? Will the most romantic gesture someone does for their significant other be a tweet professing love?

I think online dating sites are great for people who want to find love but who are otherwise occupied to the extent that they literally have zero freedom in their social calendar. But do college or high school students really need to rely on the internet to find someone? It’s time that we remember the old ways and start trying to regain our social skills.

If not, then Nicholas Sparks’s novels will basically be nothing more than re-writes of “You’ve Got Mail.” No offense to Tom Hanks, but I’m sure no one really wants that.