4 ms·

There is a very interesting chart at the last page of the pdf showing how heterosexual couples have met over the past years. Here is a direct link to the chart

• mabub24 5y ago
  The apps are exceptionally good for meeting people. I think the animosity many people have for the apps comes from the idea that using the apps is dating. For a certain generation, the first generation that grew up with the various dating apps now, using the apps is often considered dating. This is, however, a creation of the dating app companies. More people using the apps = more user numbers/engagement/data for $$$$. Couple that idea of dating as using the apps with the general decline in the use of social institutions like clubs/societies/team sports/ etc. (the decline in social partnerships and friends in general for many), and you get a generation that views dating apps as the sole way of meeting people for dating and that often recoils from the idea of asking someone out in person.
  • nicbou 5y ago
    They're excellent for platonic relationships. I met many great people that way. They are not so great for finding love in my opinion. It's a meat market, and one that's not particularly favourable to all. It magnifies biases about attractiveness and race, for instance.
• joshz404 5y ago
  It took me a bit to see the hiding in plain sight trajectory of "Met in a bar or restaurant". Everything but it and of course the dominate Met Online, are decreasing. Curious.
  • bpodgursky 5y ago
    The drop of "met in college" is the weirdest one to me. Isn't that where most people meet? Am I living in a weird bubble?
    • mehrdada 5y ago
      I suppose large fractions of people in college meet their schoolmates through the dating apps.
    • elseweather 5y ago
      Most people don't go to college, but if you did, you're likely to have a mostly college-educated bubble
      • spywaregorilla 5y ago
        Most people do go to college, and the proportion has been increasing for years, in the united states.
      • pseudalopex 5y ago
        Most Americans have some college education.[1] But not all of them start at 18, move away from home, or finish. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...
    • majormajor 5y ago
      Probably an aspect of people using apps while in college, and ending up in that bucket instead. A graph of "age when met" for current couples would be interesting, if today's "final" couples meet at a later age than in the past because people don't want to settle down as early, you'll have less school couples. We also need a graph of "number of relationships still around started by year" - if fewer relationships started in 2018 are still extant compared to ones in 2014, that's gonna skew numbers too.
    • pseudalopex 5y ago
      It peaked around 10%. And people marry later now.
    • browningstreet 5y ago
      Maybe the population of people they surveyed are old enough not to have survived their college relationships?
  • simoneau 5y ago
    This surprised me as well. In fact, this line is misleading. From the article. "Figure 1’s apparent post‐2010 rise in meeting through bars and restaurants for heterosexual couples is due entirely to couples who met online and subsequently had a first in‐person meeting at a bar or restaurant or other establishment where people gather and socialize. If we exclude the couples who first met online from the bar/restaurant category, the bar/restaurant category was significantly declining after 1995 as a venue for heterosexual couples to meet."
  • dougmwne 5y ago
    There seems to be a second wave of online dating starting with the popularity of mobile apps. That just so happened to coincidence with the huge uptick in "met in a bar/restaurant". My guess is that chatting up random people in bars has been flat to decreasing and that all the people reporting that really met on apps but met "for real" at the bar/restaurant.
• cheq 5y ago
  Met in church?, that one is good haha.
• propogandist 5y ago
  I wonder what the data looks like in 2020, it must've been almost exclusively all online, if that. Human behavior has also changed with the lockdown, where everyone was isolated and limited to electronic comms, so I don't think this chart applies to 2021+