I always knew online dating was popular, but until recently I had no idea just how massive a force it is in today’s search for a romantic partner.
According to a study by the University of Chicago psychologist John Cacioppo (not to be confused with John Cacio e Pepe, a fat Italian guy who loves pasta with pecorino and black pepper), between 2005 and 2012 more than one third of couples who got married in the United States met through an online dating site. Online dating was the single biggest way people met their spouses. Bigger than work, friends, and school combined.5
Cacioppo’s findings are so shocking that many pundits questioned their validity, or else argued that the researchers were biased because they were funded by an online dating company. But the truth is that the findings are largely consistent with those of Stanford University sociologist Michael Rosenfeld, who has done more than anyone to document the rise of Internet dating and the decline of just about every other way of connecting.
His survey, “How Couples Meet and Stay Together,” is a nationally representative study of four thousand Americans, 75 percent married or in a romantic relationship and 25 percent single. It asked adults of all ages how they met their romantic partners, and since some of the respondents were older, the survey allows us to see how things varied among different periods.6
It’s especially instructive to compare things from 1940 to 1990, right before the rise of online dating, and then again from the 1990s until today.
First let’s look at the difference between 1940 and 1990—just before online dating arrived. In 1940 the most common way to meet a romantic partner was through the family, and 21 percent met them through friends. About 12 percent met through church or in the neighborhood, and roughly the same portion met in a bar or restaurant or at work. Just a handful, about 5 percent, met in college, for the simple reason that not many people had access to higher education.
Things were different in 1990. The family had become a far less influential matchmaker, pairing up only 15 percent of singles, as did the church, which had plummeted to 7 percent. The most popular route to romance was through friends, which is how nearly 40 percent of all couples met.
The portion of people who met in bars had also increased, going up to 20 percent. Meeting someone in college had gone up to 10 percent, while meeting in the neighborhood was just a bit less common than it had been in 1940.
Another popular way partners found each other in 1990 was when a man would yell something to the effect of “Hey, girl, come back here with that fine butt that’s in them fly-ass acid-washed jeans and let me take you to a Spin Doctors/Better Than Ezra concert.” The woman, flattered by the attention and the opportunity to see one of the preeminent musical acts of the era, would quickly oblige. This is how roughly 6 percent of couples formed. To be clear, this is just a guess on my part and has nothing to do with Mr. Rosenfeld’s research.
The advent of online dating sites has transformed the way we begin romantic relationships. In 2000, a mere five years after Match .com was invented, 10 percent of all people in relationships had met their partners on the Internet, and by 2010 nearly 25 percent had. No other way of establishing a romantic connection has ever increased so far, so fast.7
In 2010 only college and bars remained roughly as important as they had been in 1995. In contrast, the portion of people who met through friends had dropped precipitously, from 40 percent to 28 percent, and meeting through the family, work, or the neighborhood became even less common, each around 10 percent or well below. And churches went the way of the Spin Doctors and Better Than Ezra, all but totally out of the game.
Now online dating is almost a prerequisite for a modern single. As of this writing, 38 percent of Americans who describe themselves as “single and looking” have used an online dating site.8
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