I could waste time going on date after date with people who live near me or I could go online and find someone who shares all my same interests/has a compatible idea of what they want for their future which matches with mine and thus we can have a future together without our wants contradicting each other. I can do this much faster online rather than going from person to person within a 5 mile radius of my home and trying to find someone like that, when I could find them quickly online and actually, I don't know, be happy with them.
Time spent with someone you love is not a waste of time, if a person is happy in their online relationship they are not wasting their time, they are being happy with someone they love.
It might stem from me moving around often/being home schooled that I never really met people irl so I sought out relationships online (But those relationships start online, they don't stay that way.) And I'm also generally afraid of people and have a history of abuse, that could make me biased in why I think an online relationship is no more or less healthy than an irl one, you can be happy in both, you can be miserable in both. Maybe one should speak from experience rather than based off of statistics. At least, that's what I'm doing.