What did we learn amid unfounded fears about Momo? After the viral spread of the Momo Challenge in recent weeks, I talked to Mark O’Flynn in RTÉ about why it went viral, how media, schools and police organisations exacerbated the problem, and how a lack of media literacy caused parents to overreact. Read the piece...

by Charlotte Ryan I talked with Charlotte Ryan about some of the problems people might encounter when they date online. I also discussed with her why people share a lot online, how they probably won’t stop doing that unless they experience a negative effect of it directly, and how our own psychology can prevent us seeing scams or people who aren’t presenting themselves honestly....

January 25th & 26th 2019. Südpol Lucerne, Switzerland. aha is a new science festival in Lucerne, Switzerland. The board of trustees have 20 interesting questions on a broad range of topics that they have invited experts to answer. I was invited to answer the question “how do dating platforms decide whom I date?” Luzern, Südpol Aha Festival © Franca Pedrazzetti www.pedrazzetti.com Luzern, Südpol Aha Festival ©...

Alexandra Bröhm Before my talk on online dating at the aha festival in Lucerne, I spoke with Alexandra Bröhm in the Tages-Anzeiger (most subscribed to newspaper in Switzerland) about how people present themselves in online dating, what they lie about, what works well in a profile, and some of the difficulties we have in finding out what people are really like from their profiles and chatting online. You can read the interview here (PDF...

Das Magazin is the weekly magazine of Tages-Anzeiger Alongside four other presenters from the aha festival in Lucerne, I wrote a short piece about my talk. See below for the English version. Can an algorithm choose the right partner for me? (Maybe even better than I could myself?) The short answer is – no, but the longer answer is much more complex. Dating platforms use algorithms to choose the order in which we see...