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?
Having 4 shades of grey as colors in a colored graph certainly is a choice...
The most distinct 8 colours are of course: Red, Blue, Blue, Black, Grey, Grey, Grey, Grey.
That chart must be made by a dog.
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...
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I want to know which couples were meeting online in 1980.
Nerds.
Bulletin board systems (BBS) go back to 1980. Men have tried everything to get laid since the dawn of humanity. It checks out.
As someone who was using BBSs by 1984-ish, I can believe that people met this way. What I can't believe is that it was at a percentage high enough to be represented as anything above zero on that graph.
Scientists probably.
A lot of people here are too young to get it, but work being a captive dating scene for skeezy shameless assholes is a million times worse than online dating.
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.
For me, the big question isn't what are the effects, but rather, what is the cause?
I see this as an effect of something else that other effects of could be mistaken as symptoms of this here.
Basically, the destruction of third spaces and public life in general has caused an increasing number of people to find relationships (both romantic and platonic) online because they no longer have the opportunity in their daily life. That, and the increased ease of long distance relationships and meeting people from far away means that people are probably more likely to have the opportunity to fall in love with somebody outside of their tiny corner of the world.
The last really serious relationship started by meeting at a bar.
It was great because there was no expectations when we first started talking so the conversation was just natural, just two people talking. We exchanged numbers and soon started dating. I really think that it worked was because it was just an accidental meeting and we were both relaxed and had no ulterior motive.
I also think because dating in the wild there are fewer filters and few options, so you go with what you got. They may not be perfect but it's better than sitting around swiping for the perfect person that may not exist.
They may not be perfect but it’s better than sitting around swiping for the perfect person that may not exist.
I actually appreciate having information on personality, background, hobbies and dating intentions up-front, rather than play a guessing game for hours or days.
The collapse of society, visualized.
Explain your thesis.
/c/dataisdepressing
I don't understand it so it must be bad.
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.
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.
I remember being in highschool in the late 90s/early 2000s and someone found out I had an online dating profile.
I was relentlessly teased about it, borderline bullying.
I eventually met my current wife online, couldn't be happier.
looking back, the teasing was likely because I was the only genuinely nice guy those girls knew and were upset their choices for dates were abysmal. it's all for the best though, I wouldn't have wanted to be around anyone who could treat me that way and be ok with it.
I'm pleased that the stigma against online dating has all but vanished.
Just got married to my wife this last weekend, who I met after being on Bumble for about 2 weeks... Gotta go buy some scratchers.
Why the rise in meeting people at work in the 1980s? Was this when there was an increase in office jobs?
If anyone is jumping into this thread: ctrl+f "fake". There is a good discussion about the data that you shouldn't miss.
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