It is impossible to live in the modern world without being aware of the ever increasing role that technology plays in our daily lives. The question of whether technology is a good or a bad thing for our relationships revolves endlessly in conversation, but popular consensus seems to be coming to a halt around the view that social media and an excessive reliance on technological, rather than physical interaction is a holistically bad thing for our mental health. Whilst few would deny that an obsession over doctored instagram photos and hollow likes is a road to unhappiness, what is often forgotten is the sheer quantity and quality of relationships that we maintain easily through technology, but that could not ever have been done just a few years ago. We dislike the way in which dating apps reduce the process of dating to a selection of images and a meaningless sentence, but what we fail to give them credit for is the choice that is given to modern people when making the decision of who to date. It's not just dating apps here, its social networking and messaging as a whole. Rejecting huge numbers of candidates, or chatting with multiple strangers you don't get along with can feel like a superficial and pointless process, but ultimately these are dates you would never be going on besides. If we all see the path to finding a great fit as a process of elimination (which lets be honest, it is), then the more dates we go on, the better, right?

The problem with this approach is that it relies on our standards and desires remaining constant, while the potential matches roll past. Issues begin to arise when our beliefs around what we are looking for start to become as drawn out and saturated as our inboxes. There is something undeniably good for the soul when making a relationship work. Putting up with people's flaws and trying to see the best in them is a quality for life, and it seems increasingly apparent that it is one we are losing rapidly. No one is saying that society functions well when people make do with people they detest, but we live in a world where the wrong hair colour or an interest in the wrong band can be enough to throw us off someone's profile, swiping them away never to be seen again. It seems increasingly that with incredible choice, comes incredible arrogance.

We all have an idea of our perfect partner and is it the case that now, we have a better chance of finding them than we would have done before the golden age of the smartphone? One unavoidable superpower of modern technology is its ability to rekindle past relationships. We take it for granted that one can access almost anybody we have met, or chatted with, even for a brief moment with a touch of a button. If nothing else, there is something to be said for the way in which technology enables us to retain contact with almost everyone we have ever met, for better or for worse.