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In a society that highly values marital harmony, divorce is often seen as a cultural transgression. This study addresses a gap in literature by focusing on the online social interactions of divorced Chinese youth, exploring their use of dating apps for emotional support and social reconnections. This qualitative study employed semi-structured interviews with 19 divorced young adults in China who engaged with dating apps such as Momo, Tantan, and Soul.
Participants were recruited via Douban and Xiaohongshu. The interviews, conducted through WeChat voice calls and Tencent Meetings, lasted minutes each. Data was analyzed using Nvivo12 to understand the disembedding and re-embedding processes in their online interactions, exploring themes such as motivations, self-presentation, and the transition from online to offline engagements.
The findings reveal that these individuals face societal challenges, biases, and the residual effects of past marriages, leading them to seek refuge in online environments to avoid stigmatization. In digital spaces, they cautiously engage, revealing a lack of confidence through selective self-disclosure. Their goals range from forming same-sex and opposite-sex friendships to seeking new romantic relationships, indicating a nuanced approach to remarriage and challenging stereotypes of dating app users.
