How Couples Meet in the US
How Couples Meet in the US
It's been trending this way for years, but seeing it graphed out like this is shocking.
What do you think are the effects of this drastic change?
The collapse of society, visualized.
/c/dataisdepressing
I'm personally thrilled not to be bound by the recommendations of my friends or family. Or work?! Gross!
People: "Oh hey there Digital Frontier, looking forward to the opportunity" The Permanently Online: "Get out of my swamp!"
I first dated online in 1999, and the first woman I dated I ended up marrying and having two kids with, though we divorced in 2017.
I still date online these days, and I prefer it. It allows me to know a little about a person before I waste any time chatting them up, and the things I need to know are things they generally put on their profile. Things like their sexuality (since I am non-binary), their political leaning (I'm socialist), their relationship orientation (I'm polyamorous), whether our values match...you know...important shit. And those early conversations before we ever meet in person are low-key enough that I feel more comfortable with them IRL, something that helps me as an autistic person.
I think this graph is fake. The way the data is presented is confusing, but the study they are citing doesn't seem to confirm anywhere close to the 60% figure, it seems to be saying 11.5% instead: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/ICPSR/studies/38873/datasets/0001/variables/W1_Q24_MET_ONLINE?archive=icpsr
This lower figure also seems to line up with other studies: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/02/02/key-findings-about-online-dating-in-the-u-s/
One-in-ten partnered adults – meaning those who are married, living with a partner or in a committed romantic relationship – met their current significant other through a dating site or app.
The graph is branded with the logo of "Marriage Pact", which seems to be a dating app/service targeting college students. Maybe they made it as a form of (deceptive, unethical) advertising? I don't know, reverse image search just shows similarly unsourced social media posts, I can't confirm anything about its origins.
but the study they are citing doesn't seem to confirm anywhere close to the 60% figure, it seems to be saying 11.5% instead
I think you've linked the variable of all couples regardless of when they got together. If 11.5% of all couples met online, whether they met in 2023 or 1975, then that doesn't actually disprove the line graph (which could be what percentage of couples who met in that particular year met through each method).
The researchers who maintain the data set you've linked published an analysis of the 2017 data showing that it was approaching 40% towards the most recent relationships being formed, in 2017. I could believe that post-covid, the trends have approached 60%.
It could be that. I'm noticing now that the study I linked has a note about a sampling error they made:
Self-identified LGB adults were oversampled in HCMST 2017, and therefore remain oversampled in subsequent waves (2020, 2022). the weights (W1_WEIGHT_COMBO, W2_COMBO_WEIGHT, and W3_COMBO_WEIGHT) correct for this oversample.
So another possibility is that the data used for the graph is wrong because of a big correlation between sexual orientation and preference for online dating and it was made before this was corrected.
I don't think the figures are intuitively implausible, mostly I'm just bothered by the apparent lack of any way to confirm the authenticity of the graph and its relationship to the source material, or get an authoritative answer to the question of how prevalent online dating is.
One reason to doubt them though, the other article I linked says that as of 2022
About half of those under 30 (53%) report having ever used a dating site or app
Which is the demographic that uses them the most. So it doesn't make sense that more people would have met their current partner through a dating app than have ever used one.
I think the difference is that variable is the entire population of coupled adults. Of course not 60% of all couples met online, but I'd believe 60% of couples that met this year met online.
I’d believe 60% of couples that met this year met online.
I think there's a question of denominator, rather than percentage, involved here.
What happens when you have a pre-online standard of 100 new interactions a year in a population of 100k single-and-looking-to-mingle daters. Then you introduce dating apps, and you've still got the base-load 100 new interactions happening normally, but now you've got apps which allow you to make thousands of interactions a month rather than a hundred a year.
Now a hundred of those power-users on Grinder all start meeting up and fucking online. 100 unique combinations gets you 4950 "couples that met" in a year. Yeah, the "met up" only lasted for the duration of a naked high-five, but its points on the board!
Compare that to 100 couples that meets outside the app, but are doing it at the more stately pace of once-a-month (so, 3 times in 100 days). rather than as fast as they can swipe through the app. 300 unique "met ups" by comparison. Kinda high by historical standards but infintessimal to the ass-slapping orgy of dating the online community allows.
As someone who watches friends on these apps go on dates two or three times a week, but never settle down (because the focus of these apps is hooking up, not settling down, and the system is engineered to keep you engaged and swiping) I put forward the hypothesis that "How Couples Met" isn't seeing a decline in non-app interactions but an enormous surge among a particular rarified group of power users milling their way through the library of potential hook-ups online.
I'd also posit that some number of these hook-ups are purely artificial (bot accounts, catfishing, onlyfans promotions, or other phony profiles) that exist purely to encourage lonely people to engage with the system and don't actually signify human-to-human interactions. As evidence of this, I'd point you to restaurants using dating apps to dupe users into becoming customers.
Thankyou for digging past the headlines and showing your findings. No one has the time to do it all the time but together we can.
(**edit: I had accidentally grabbed a graph about same-sex relationships without realizing it and have removed.)
Unclear what study that is referencing, but it's notable that Michael Rosenfeld is also the first listed principle investigator in the study referenced in the OP, likely part of the same project, since they list updates for every few years (How Couples Meet and Stay Together (HCMST) 2017, 2020, 2022, United States). Also unclear who compiled the graph or where it was originally published. I want to reiterate that this study itself seems to very much not line up with the graph, unless I'm misreading it very badly.
The BBC article is about a book, Modern Romance, and the book makes a claim that 35% of Americans met their spouses online ("respondents who married between 2005 and 2012"). This checks out with the cited source study, which makes an identical claim, though there's reason to be suspicious of it since it was funded by eHarmony. The scope there is a little different than "all couples", but it's still a very different number than what is in either this article's graph, or in the OP graph, which are very different from each other as well (saying the number reached 70% by 2009 vs saying it reached 60% by 2020. I would think that if these graphs are genuinely based on research by Michael Rosenfeld that they would at least check out with each other.
Here's what I think is probably going on here: people working for the marketing departments of dating apps fabricate bogus graphs, falsely attribute their source to real studies, and push them on social media to go viral. Then people writing articles like the one you linked about the subject copy paste those images without checking them, because it's just a fluff piece for a recently published book and they don't have much time to spend on it.
Where did you originally find the OP image?
Edit: Just noticed that the second graph is specifically about same-sex couples.
Pathetic. Glad I did not meet better half on the f'n internet.
two of my friends met through an online game. they got married this year and are a happy couple.
I’m sure off loading the human mating ritual to profit driven companies will have no negative effects on society whatsoever, this definitely isn’t the horrors here to unseen except in the most dystopian of science fiction novels.
Is there anything we can't privatize for profit?
Can't privatize individuals' bodily functions, but you can enshitify the experience of all senses, "Want to turn off the lights at night? That's 5 dollars per hour. Want to enable the flush of your toilet? That'll be 7.50, thank you. In order to remove the noise from your apartment, please pay the subscription. If you want to get rid of ALL the noises, pay the diamond premium sub!"
Technology has found a new way for people to meet up and fuck, a thing that they had older and less efficient methods of doing in the past. What is the consequence of high-speed fucking? Fortunately, with the advent of contraception and prophylactics, I would say not much.
The means of communication have changed, but the innate human impulses and behaviors remain the same.
this definitely isn’t the horrors here to unseen except in the most dystopian of science fiction novels
What is the fundamental difference between dudes cruising for sex in bars and nightclubs during the 1980s and dudes cruising for sex on grinder in the 2020s? What is the difference between speed dating and Tinder? What is the difference between high schoolers / college kids sexting and getting each other off over the landline?
Humanity has survived worse indignities.
I wish there was some granularity to "online." I met my wife on a BBS in 94. It wasn't a dating site, it was a discussion board, and neither of us was looking to hook up with anyone. There are lots of things like that, but I'm guessing dating apps/sites are the biggest component.
The number of people that met on BBS would probably not even register as a line on that graph, lol. You are a rare gem, good sir or madam.
I wasn't meaning to say that my situation itself was representative, just that most people see that line and think dating sites, and that's probably not completely correct. There are lots of online venues, like games, that aren't dating sites, but I didn't know what the breakdown is.
People who randomly throw out acronyms expecting everyone to know them are TEBM.
Honestly, WoW would be a not insignificant chunk of people that met online if it was split up into more granular data.
I bet you're right, and significantly more if you included online games as its own subcategory.
Awesome. Met the wife on IRCnet, shortly after the great split.
Look at the date of the latest piece of data, and you have your answer
That is kinda sad
Having 4 shades of grey as colors in a colored graph certainly is a choice...
That chart must be made by a dog.
The most distinct 8 colours are of course: Red, Blue, Blue, Black, Grey, Grey, Grey, Grey.
They're all dubious relationships. Only work, friends and online lead to clear, healthy relationships.
/s
It's almost like something happened in 2020 to cause a big spike. I wonder what that could have been, and if it is still the case.
Ah, life is full of mysteries.
Except the graph ends with 2020, so I'm not sure it even includes whatever mystery events might have biased things towards online that year.
It doesn't split, but I'd guess 99.9% of those online meets are dating apps (rather than other ways of meeting online).
That's kind of sad, not because there's any one way people should meet, but because meeting people is now mostly mediated through for profit companies.
I'd honestly be very surprised if that was the case. There's so many different ways to interact with people online that I expect dating websites to make up a majority, but there's probably like a 45% spread of things like social media/forum communities, online games, etc. All the kinds of things that used to be done offline (like meeting people through DnD at the local hobby shop) but can be done online or have become largely online thanks to the commodification of existing in public spaces. Shared interests are a great start to a relationship.
Hell, I'd love to see a breakdown of the percentages just to see how many relationships start from 3rd place games like Second Life and VRChat.
You didn't meet your spouse on World of Warcraft?
I feel called out lmao
Fuck that is sobering to see. I mean you knew it was trending in that direction but to see it so starkly and so drastically. Damn.
Huh. I never knew that people really do meet at bars for more than just a one night stand.
Met my girlfriend at a bar, but that's not why either of us were there.
Became friends first, didn't start dating till a few months later.
There really just aren't that many places to meet people irl any more, and I simply won't do online dating.
I never thought so many people who meet online get into actual relationships, not just one night stands.
It is more that you meet them for a one night stand. Then you decide to hang out later. Then you wake up one day and you two are married with children.
Yeah, one night stands can turn into lasting relationships. I know a decent number of married couples who met in zero-commitment contexts, whether it's a hookup from a bar or while on vacation in a tourist town or things like that. Or even meeting on a hookup-oriented app that somehow turned into a not-just-for-hookups service after becoming acquired by Match, but during the phase when it was most definitely mainly for no-strings hookups.
I think the online thing is about to start dropping. The sites are so full of looky-loos who just want to chat and never actually meet in person they're hardly worth the time. I expect as the bot infestation continues to grow, they'll be even less useful.
There is also the enshittification that intentionally make the sites worse and harder to use... I will never in a million years understand why useful features are removed completely other than "the longer you are stuck on the site the more likely you are to pay for premium."
POF used to have a section for you to add tags and a function to search by tags. Completely gone. Not even a premium feature. OKC used to have an additional text entry to elaborate on the questions you answer, now completely gone. "do you believe animals have spirits like people" yes or no.... No, but that makes me sound like an asshole. I don't believe either do, but I can't explain that now... OKC used to let you browse profiles instead of just swipe swipe swipe. Match group bought every successful dating site and absolutely destroyed them to make them all seemingly identical "Tinder 2.0" clones.
I'm not 100% sure on this one, but there aren't even direct messages on OKC at first, just an "intro" and I've seen on women's profiles they say "I read all my intros." There's a tab for intros, so I'm assuming their intros show up there. I'm a guy, I NEVER have had an intro in that tab, but if I happen to stumble on a profile where she sent me an intro it shows up on her profile. Not trying to be sexist, I think they are playing the bullshit game of "men are more desperate and willing to pay so we'll do what we can to make them stuck here longer."
POF is even more of a joke now, they are moving more towards streaming and paid rewards... Fucking streamer profiles "not here to date, just here for the streaming." It's so absurd what happened to online dating.
A lot of people are ok with tinder or hinge, but I need more information about a person I'm not one of those "unga bunga she pretty, lemme smash" types. I need a profile to read...
Most of the "people" on there aren't people. They're either bots or occasionally those looky-loos that are just hired actors to keep people engaged to the site and try and get as much money out of them as possible. Especially the paid dating sites are mostly just that. They're just sucking money out of people that are genuinely emotionally invested and sometimes even desperate. It's real sad, and disgusting from those sites.
I think online dating will still remain. But it's less of actual interest for long term stuff, and more want to have a fun one night stand kind of deal. I feel like most other things on that chart turned into that as well though.
I think the online thing is about to start dropping.
The graph stops at 2020...the height of the pandemic where everyone was stuck in physical, but not virtual isolation.
I agree with you except my guess is that has already dropped if post-pandemic data was introduced.
"online" doesn't necessarily mean dedicated dating/match making apps.
The Internet connects people in a way that nothing ever has before. You use the Internet to seek out interests of yours, as will other people. So like minded people tend to meet even incidentally.
I met my partner online, but it was on a game, not a dating service. Neither of us were really looking for love. We became friends, then started dating, and now married for years.
Story time?
I once moved across the country for a woman I (re)met during a random Words with Friends match. Took us a dozen games before I realized I’d originally met her through LiveJournal, about a decade earlier.
Many years later, my wife moved across the country to be with me, after we met on Reddit. (Clearly the previously mentioned woman was better as a friend.)
We just always go full circle in the world with almost everything.
some of recognize that and use it to enrich themselves & entrench their positions; a few others who also recognize it decide to use it to try improve humanity's lot in life; and the overwhelming majority are only vaguely aware at best, call the latter tankies while idolizing the former.
Totally agree with this. I've been on and off the apps for years and they get worse each time I try again. There is a population of people that use dating apps like a game trying to get the high score with the points being likes and matches. It's just another form of social media at this point.
You would know!!!
I met my partner through friends at the EXACT point where “Through friends” intersects with “online”. Interesting.
I'm from the south, what about family reunions?
In Alberta that's cool.
To think it all started with DoD nerds hooking up in the 80s.
Yeah not sure what they mean by "online" in the early 80s. That was even too early for BBS to really be a big thing. Like there were people out there messing with that stuff. I had a modem for my MSX in 80s, where you put the horn on the modem to interface. But besides from dialing my one friend who also had one and being amazed at the tech, it had no real use. The graph makes it seem like an actual percentage of people were not only online, but meeting their future partners on there? That makes me doubt the validity of this graph.
Could be early IT people meeting secretaries and the like when visiting to fix the internet.
I met my spouse online in the naughts, and it was unusual and required explaining to most people.
I want to know which couples were meeting online in 1980.
Don't be jealous that I've been chatting online with babes all day.
Nerds.
Bulletin board systems (BBS) go back to 1980. Men have tried everything to get laid since the dawn of humanity. It checks out.
Meeting online before Internet:
"sorry, I got kicked offline temporarily"
"Ouch! Are you okay?"
Scientists probably.
University nerds with early access to early forms of Internet would definitely never utilize such serious world changing technology to chat and dawdle amongst themselves to the point a connection would form. It's not like the entirety of video gaming was created by a nerd severely misusing an extremely expensive oscilloscope.
They probably meant in line, like at Kmart or whatever other stores were still open then.
Back when it was called "computer dating" and people printed dot matrix pages out with their interests.
Not quite the 80s, but I met my wife online in ‘93 or ‘94. Initially it was just a passing conversation a few times. We met in earnest in ‘95. She does not remember the initial meeting, we were both using different screen names.
I wouldn't have expected schools to be so low tbh
There is a big change these days to keep predators out of grade schools. It used to be the norm for a man to be 10 or even 20 years older than his bride. So I am not surprised to see grade school dropping.
That's not at all what I meant... When my girlfriend and I met for the first time, we were in high school. We were both students in the same class.
I like the idea of dating apps, but I don't like the implementation or at least how they end up being used where the focus is entirely on visual attraction. I don't particularly think or care about looks; I'm attracted to personality. Most people have blank profiles and just a lot of pictures, so I either have to decide to not like a majority of profiles or like everything just to maybe get a chance to talk to someone.
And it doesn't help having BPD and not really having a solid identity to tell people who I am in a single block of limited characters. So when nobody even communicates when you actually match, it just makes the whole thing seem pointless and stupid.
I met my wife through eHarmony. I tried the other apps available at the time (mid 2000s) and most were "profile pic & swipe" level of depth. eHarmony had a fee (so both parties were at least a little more committed to finding a partner, rather than "sign up for free account while drinking one night"). Also it had maybe 100(?) questions you had to fill out before it'd give you any matches... basically a quasi personality profile about what you were like and what you were looking for in a relationship. The result was fewer matches, but all the dates I went on were meaningful (eventually leading to ~15 years of marriage & 2 kids).
There's now additional dating sites beyond just eHarmony that have this barrier to entry which seems similar (although I don't have personal experience with those).
I have not online dated. Are the people with blank profiles interesting people at all? Or are they just there for a hookup?
Kinda depends on their gender, in my experience. Guys without a profile and pics of just themselves not really doing much are usually just looking for a hookup. The girls without a profile are usually what is generally accepted as highly attractive and probably don't even care because everyone will like them.
I have yet to actually have someone talk to me on any of these apps beyond saying hello or asking how my day is. I had better luck actually finding people to talk to, get to know, then set up a date through Craigslist back when it had a personals section.
Kudos to that handful of people who met online in the fucking 80s. Talk about meeting over niche interests.
Why the rise in meeting people at work in the 1980s? Was this when there was an increase in office jobs?
I'd guess it's due to more women in the workforce.
Probably a number of economic factors. We see a corresponding bump in Bars and dips in College and Family, so I would guess there was an uptick in young adults going straight into the workforce due to compelling non-college opportunities, and then spending their hard earned wages on after work recreation. High inflation or overwork culture may have induced folks to spend more time at work or unwind more after work. Improvements toward gender equality in the workplace probably also contributed.
Whether any of that is accurate or not, I have no clue, but the dip corresponding to the 1990-91 recession leads me to believe the main driver for the 80s rise is economic.
Why does the graph use 5 shades of gray for some categories?
To keep the highest three more visible using color? Idk, just a guess...
Surely this graph is wrong? In 1974 couples used to meet while kung fu fighting. A lot of research tends to prove it.
wait, everybody was kung fu fighting?
It's hard to get a headcount when people are fast as lightning.
Q: "Why didn't you get in touch with that guy you met at the kung fu fight?"
A: "In fact, he was a little bit frightening..."
through family
Hmm...
I know couples where that happened, kinda. One family knows another family for various reasons and the families introduce their kids to each other. Sometimes, they hit it off.
The few times I’ve had friends set me up never ended well. Those were usually the worst, in terms of compatibility.
It’s funny I guess how friends view you. Either that or they just want their friend groups to be one big “family”.
I’m not surprised to see such a huge drop there.
I met my partner because my ex broke into their house with a friend to get their bong back. My partner and their ex, walked in on my friend and my ex, and obviously freaked out. I have no idea why they decided to be friends, but as a result, I've been in a relationship for 7 years now lmao. If anyone is wondering how that happened, we were poly, but now we're monogamous. Also, both of our ex'es are transitioning now, and I couldn't be happier for them. That's just a random coincidence. One male, one female. Also, it's really weird being in a straight relationship after being in a queer relationship for years. Sorry for the tangent.
The sad thing is, that amazing story would be listed as just "through friends" on the survey.
Grade school is funny. That's K-6, right? Like 6-12 year olds?
Church is a conspicuous absence on this chart, I guess nobody really meets anyone there?
I think "grade school" would count K-12, but I could be wrong. I was surprised about the church thing too, especially since the data goes back far enough that it should be significant. I wonder if it's falling under another umbrella.
Whoever made the chart presumably thought "grade school" meant K-12, which it does not.
Easy mistake though, Fight Club got a particularly lewd line past both the censors and the actress by relying on that misunderstanding
It probably falls under neighbors
Why does online shoot up as soon as it surpasses friends?
It has to be smartphone apps coming out
Those numbers don't seem toadd up to 100%...
For "through friends", I feel like a lot of larger friend networks have collapsed. People aren't friends with as many people as large get togethers have become rarer over time.
There are stories of people who met once at a long event and then maintained contact over time. Now, everyone would be on their phone.
furries