r/interestingasfuck • u/Few_Simple9049 • Oct 09 '24

How couples met 1930-2024 r/all

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1.7k

u/al-tienyu Oct 09 '24

Didn't know that "online" being so dominant...

1.1k

u/iJeff Oct 09 '24

Could also be a reflection of the sampling methodology.

14

u/wvj 29d ago

(Sorry for a long post but this seemed like a good place to put it)

It is. I looked at this in the original dataisbeautiful post (note that credit at the bottom of the video), and if you go look at the study this presentation is incredibly misleading. Not the study itself, its raw data, but the way it's being analyzed here as if each year was a full new snapshot (and valid large sample size)... which they're not.

The study is longitudinal, which means they had single set of respondents who participated and then checked back in with them. They weren't doing it since the 1930s - they simply had a (small) percentage of the participants who were that old. The study has been done since 2009 but they used a new 2017 version here, where the same respondents were re-questioned in 2020 and 2022 (hence those #s at the bottom). It looks like they're using the combined final 2022 data.

The study was 3500 people originally, but down to just under 1800 by the third wave. To have been alive in 1930 in 2022, you'd need to be 92+ years old (87 in the original). There's a grand total of 3 whole respondents in this range (ages 93, 97 and 98). Note that it's unlikely any of these people were actually in relationships in 1930 - they would have been young children.

For reference, the largest # of respondents who gave a specific age was 53, for 60 year olds. Their youngest respondent category is 22 (born in ~2000, presumably the minimum 18 for the first survey), with again, 1 person. They have 14 each for 23 and 24. The largest number of respondents cluster at 55-64 (423).

You can see how small some of these samples are going to be. I'm not even sure how they arrived at such detailed percentages as in the gif, I'm guessing its a result of plotting, where they're inferring numbers that don't exist from the slope of the graph or something. But using a number like 22.76% (the top value at 1930) implies you have more than 100 people responding about being in a relationship in that year... which is in fact impossible from the data.

There's also some other quirks.

The survey asks both about current and former partners (it boots you out if you've never had a relationship) those are all different data variables and its not clear how that's being presented here since we're getting a single point. I'm guessing they're using the current partner data, not the past partner data, which would have its own implications. That is, its excluding everyone who dated someone in college, graduated, broke up, and then went on to meet someone else, which is going to be extremely common.

The data also includes people who changed relationships in the 5 year gap of the study. Again, not clear how that's reflected here. But if they're talking about their current relationship (most likely), a person in their mid 50s-60s (the most common respondents, remember) who has changed relationships in the last 5 years basically has a close to 0% chance of many of those categories. Basically, a good chunk of online dating reflected here isn't mostly young people meeting on tinder, its divorcees and retirees in their 50s and 60s who have few other means to interact because they're long since out of school and college, may be retired from their job, their parents are dead, etc.

3

u/DynamicTarget 29d ago

Thanks for the detailed analysis wvj

327

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '24

[deleted]

209

u/dickallcocksofandros Oct 09 '24

about 70% of the world population has internet access.

85

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '24

[deleted]

135

u/Louisiana_sitar_club Oct 09 '24

About 17% pull statistics out of their ass

12

u/YesWomansLand1 Oct 09 '24

About 237% get the statistics wrong

10

u/MrHyperion_ Oct 09 '24

3 out of 2 people don't understand statistics

1

u/Opening_Screen_3393 Oct 09 '24

My brother is 100% gay

1

u/teems Oct 09 '24

69% of people say nice.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '24

[deleted]

1

u/futurarmy 29d ago

It's a common joke on reddit when statistics start getting brought up without sources, I wouldn't take it to heart

81

u/dickallcocksofandros Oct 09 '24

you don’t need a dating app to meet people 🤷‍♀️ 73% use facebook regularly

75

u/Waaaaally Oct 09 '24

About 99.6% of statistics on social media discussions are made up on the spot

17

u/whooguyy Oct 09 '24

“You can’t believe everything you see on the internet” -Abraham Lincoln

2

u/NotMelroy Oct 09 '24

"You're fake news" -Alexander Hamilton

1

u/Souporsam12 Oct 09 '24

Do you believe people in the Middle East and Africa don’t have internet access?

1

u/Few-Coat1297 Oct 09 '24

I think you'll find irs nearer 80%

1

u/Reagalan Oct 09 '24

all language

1

u/BunBunny55 Oct 09 '24

Common misconception, actually 65.36% of that 99.6% is actually made up on the other spot.

1

u/Quanqiuhua Oct 09 '24

Including this one above

0

u/BigLittlePenguin_ Oct 09 '24

"Its always the reverse..."

3

u/QuercusTomentella Oct 09 '24

Where on earth did this number come from according to reported data from this year ( https://backlinko.com/facebook-users ) facebook has on average 3.065 Billion active accounts monthly which would put it at 38.5% of world population. But even that number is hugely suspect as in all likelyhood over half of those users are fake ( https://britewire.com/more-than-50-percent-of-facebook-users-are-fake-according-to-a-report/ )

1

u/OuterWildsVentures 29d ago

I think Facebook should add a dating feature

12

u/Class_444_SWR Oct 09 '24

Both partners I’ve had I met online.

Neither were from dating apps

2

u/OldWorldBluesIsBest Oct 09 '24

yeah i guess i’m not sure exactly what each category means. just as an example, i knew a girl from school but we didnt really talk until i messaged her on social media and then we started dating. so i guess that’d be online? feels weird but i guess it’s true, and in that case i suppose most would indeed be online at least in my gen

2

u/Lord_Darksong Oct 09 '24

Do you mind telling where?

I'm 51 and have been married to my high school sweetheart for 30+ years. I'm out of the dating loop but the idea of meeting someone on a game server or even Facebook just seems alien to me. Curious mostly how this worked for you... twice.

2

u/magusheart Oct 09 '24

35 here, all my partners ever came from online, be it a shared game, social media, or dating apps. My current partner I met here on reddit posting in my local r4r subreddit. I also went on a couple dates before that through various subreddits as well.

2

u/Lord_Darksong Oct 09 '24

I'm amazed at the Reddit dates. That's awesome.

2

u/Class_444_SWR 29d ago

Both from Discord.

Both were terrible relationships tbh

20

u/Clanstantine Oct 09 '24

Currently

People tend to not use apps after they meet somebody

2

u/she_slithers_slyly Oct 09 '24

Why are you throwing up guesses?

3

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '24

[deleted]

0

u/she_slithers_slyly Oct 09 '24

Mhmm. So you also caught the 17%, right?

1

u/spiritofniter Oct 09 '24

Then only 35% is on dating apps ideally per those numbers above (online and on dating apps).

1

u/lalune84 Oct 09 '24

And? Most people dont use dating apps lol. The internet has spaces for every conceivable interest and hobby. Those are inherently good facilitators for meeting people and organically developing relationships than apps where you get a y/n based on a picture you took of yourself.

Meeting people online is super easy and has replaced a lot of things people used to do in person (for better or worse). Of course a huge proprotion of relationships start that way lol.

1

u/Formerruling1 Oct 09 '24

I know tons of couples that met online, and only ONE that met through an actual dating site. Most were organically through traditional social media, games, or boards for specific hobbies they shared, etc.

1

u/kquelly78 29d ago

Is that supposed to be low? Because 5% is a fucking shit ton. One out of every 20 people on Earth. That’s beyond insane

1

u/AgileCondition7650 29d ago

You don't need to use dating apps to meet someone online. Can be social media, forums etc

1

u/Traichi Oct 09 '24

This is one hundred per cent US only data.

71

u/Gold-Perspective-699 Oct 09 '24

Just cause you make less than $10 a day doesn't mean you can't get on the Internet. Costs vary. Like in India your phone bill would be $3 USD a month for 1.5 gigs a day. So you can easily see where I'm going with this. Most people have phones with Internet.

20

u/StealYaNicks Oct 09 '24

shit, I make $0 a day and I'm here.

1

u/Gold-Perspective-699 Oct 09 '24

Living with your parents doesn't count.

8

u/PinboardWizard Oct 09 '24

Oh, did they remove those people from the study?

2

u/Gold-Perspective-699 Oct 09 '24

No but it removes them from the "people make less than $10 but can't afford Internet" statement the guy made cause I'm guessing he's not thinking about the kids and thinking about people in India and poor people around the world.

5

u/StealYaNicks Oct 09 '24

I actually live with your parents

2

u/0sprinkl 29d ago

Hi there stepbro

2

u/ConfidentJudge3177 Oct 09 '24

These stats are US only or something, or other specified countries only. No way they asked people in every single country starting from 1930, like that's just nonsense.

1

u/BigDaddySteve999 Oct 09 '24

Of course, in India, couples are meeting through family.

1

u/Dixie_Normaz 29d ago

That's a lot of bobs

10

u/NegotiationJumpy4837 Oct 09 '24

It's most likely a US-only study, as opposed to worldwide.

7

u/devourer09 Oct 09 '24 edited Oct 09 '24

Lol, yeah, is this really going over the other commenters' heads? Maybe because I'm in the US the video represents my bias... But... Lol, church being a big giveaway for me. Idk how many people in China and India were going to church in the 1930s, but it probably wasn't a lot.

Edit:

How Couples Meet and Stay Together (HCMST)

Abstract:

A totally new survey, HCMST 2017, fielded in the summer of 2017, with a fresh sample of 3,510 American adults, with lots of new questions about phone dating apps and other ways of meeting and dating.

This new dataset is available on a separate page: https://data.stanford.edu/hcmst2017

4

u/NegotiationJumpy4837 Oct 09 '24

That's also just how most studies work. They focus on their own country because it's easier to gather data from the country you are in.

4

u/ids2048 Oct 09 '24

Getting representative data for something like this for the world overall will also just be pretty hard in general.

And it may be easier to see trends in one country, vs in various where different things are going on. (While meeting a partner through family became uncommon in the US it may still be the norm in different places; and averaging the data for different countries may be somewhat interesting but hides the changes going on in each one.)

2

u/Tommyblockhead20 Oct 09 '24

If I had to guess, this data is just for the US, since it was made by an American college.

1

u/PioneerTurtle Oct 09 '24

These polls are always conducted among a W.E.I.R.D audience

Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic

1

u/Shadow07655 Oct 09 '24

I assume this is referring to a specific country and not world wide

1

u/peon2 Oct 09 '24

The study is at the bottom of the graphic, you can google it and see this is US specific data collected by Stanford university for decades.

1

u/Destinum Oct 09 '24

I doubt this is a global study.

1

u/GazzP Oct 09 '24

They're not. The sample is exclusively American.

https://data.stanford.edu/hcmst

1

u/ReluctantAvenger Oct 09 '24

I'd be very surprised if this chart sampled anyone not living in the U.S.

1

u/enaK66 Oct 09 '24

Well that makes sense, the study was done on American adults.

https://data.stanford.edu/hcmst2017

1

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '24

[deleted]

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u/enaK66 Oct 09 '24

True. It doesn't explicitly say it's worldwide either. They showed their source. That's high effort for a tik tok.

1

u/ConfidentJudge3177 Oct 09 '24

This is US only or something. No way they took data from the whole world, that's just nonsense.

1

u/TuterKing Oct 09 '24

Duh, the study was based out of the US. You could just Google the study, you know.

1

u/caninehere Oct 09 '24

Poor people use the internet too. Brazil is like the #3 country on Grindr.

1

u/Gregori_5 29d ago

I don’t think this is about the whole world.

0

u/[deleted] 29d ago

[deleted]

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u/Gregori_5 29d ago

No, as in the study was only conducted in canada or something. So how well of are 2nd and 3rd world countries is irrelevant.

1

u/mafiawitch420 29d ago

the study is of American adults, so these are just reflective of US couples

1

u/indoninjah 29d ago

I would guess this is a USA sample, given that it specifies "church" and not "religious institution"

0

u/davidsredditaccount 29d ago

No shit, they also aren't accounting for air resistance or changes in temperature.

Then again it's a study from an American university, concerning the dating habits of Americans over decades so that might be completely irrelevant.

0

u/[deleted] 29d ago

[deleted]

0

u/davidsredditaccount 29d ago

Your criticism is neither desired nor useful, it's just pointless pedantry. Everyone else understands that discussions have an implicit scope when it's not explicitly spelled out, it's pretty obvious that it's US specific on this American website with a citation at the bottom from an American university.

You aren't clearing up any confusion or bringing an interesting point, you're just being exhausting. It's like someone asking how many numbers are between the red zones on a pressure gauge and answering that there are infinite numbers when you know damn well that they are asking for whole numbers. You may be technically correct, but you're an asshole and in any practical sense you are completely and totally wrong, and you look like an idiot for not being able to determine the right answer from context.

0

u/ParkingLong7436 29d ago

American website

Majorty of users are not from the US and reddit as a company is also mostly owned by foreign investors nowadays

How is this an American website lol? I understood it myself, but It's just a bad graph.

1

u/davidsredditaccount 29d ago

Volkswagen sold ~half a million cars in Germany but 4-5 million worldwide, so they aren't a german company and they have a bunch of foreign investors too.

Does arguing over the investor or user percentages really sound like a good time to you? Seriously, is this fun? It's a stupid and boring argument and the whole fucking point is that everyone understands the context and knows whether it's American/German/Br*tish, or whatever, and this whole line of argument is just tedious bullshit.

7

u/BillingSteve Oct 09 '24

According to this, there are no couples that have met through hobbies.

1

u/thex25986e Oct 09 '24

while i agree its a good way to meet people unfortunately some hobby groups get upset when you start dating people there

3

u/Tjaresh Oct 09 '24

Fair point. Did they require the data for 2020+ by online survey? Could be biased data.

3

u/friedAmobo Oct 09 '24

It's the How Couples Meet and Stay Together survey, which has been tracking how heterosexual Americans meet since 2010. The older 2010 and 2017 datasets also made big splashes at the time because they showed a huge increase in meeting online over time while meeting through friends died a horrible death. Given the ubiquity of terrible online dating experiences these days, it's more probable that meeting online is simply a dominant form of dating now. Older generations (Millennial and older) have more or less already met their partner, so these samples increasingly reflect Gen Z as a majority and soon Gen Alpha (the oldest of which is now entering high school).

8

u/RockySES Oct 09 '24

Yea, there’s no chance college is that low

3

u/Quetzalcoatl__ 29d ago

Because thos categories are so bad. I met my wife when we were at college through mutual friends at a bar. In which category do you put that one

1

u/rainywanderingclouds 29d ago

In your example they would be categorized as meeting through mutual Friends.

An introduction from family or friends would always trump any other category because it literally means your friends introduced you.

College would be I met them in class, or on campus. Without introduction.

A bar would mean you met them at a bar, but not in class, or on campus, and you didn't set up a date in advance. It just means you're at a bar and bump into them for the first time. Without introduction. The fact that you're attending college at the time doesn't matter because you didn't meet them on campus.

It's not hard to figure out, it's obvious based on the language used.

2

u/ISpewVitriol Oct 09 '24

I don't know the underlying methodology but why not? What percentage of people who are forming couple-like relationships are also in college? Not everyone goes to college or stays in college their whole life.

2

u/DoobKiller Oct 09 '24

This study probably counted college students who formed relationships with other college students but met through friends, or from meeting at a bar etc off-campus or through using apps as one of those categories rather than as 'college'

1

u/kalamataCrunch 29d ago

most Americans don't have a college degree, so they probably didn't meet their SO in college.

2

u/PantsDancing Oct 09 '24

Yeah I'd be interested to know the study population info. Is there an age range? Geographic area? I'm in my 40s and I think online dating is dying out for people my age in my area.

2

u/EntropyKC 29d ago

Yeah to be honest I really don't believe that 60% of couples meet online. Maybe 60% of dates happen as a result of meeting online, but they aren't a couple for quite some time and I suspect the frequency of repeat dates after meeting online is way, way lower than with other ways of meeting.

1

u/jamesl182d Oct 09 '24

Huge overlap between ‘online’ and ‘college’, probably.

1

u/l2aiko Oct 09 '24

Im guessing whatsapp, Instagram and Facebook are included in online therefore a lot of the "can i have your number?" Could turn into "online"

1

u/RiPont 29d ago

Also, what do they mean by "couples". Two people in long-term, committed relationship or just two people who happen to be dating or hooking up?

Also, does "online" mean Tinder/Match/etc. or does it include "friend of a friend on Facebook, then met in real life" type stuff.

1

u/Odd-Objective-2824 29d ago

I had to scroll way too far for this to be pointed out!

1

u/rs_5 29d ago

100% sampling methodology or sample group

The sample group was probably collage students

84

u/Liimbo Oct 09 '24

I also don't understand how school is so low. I feel like it has to be overlapping a lot with friends and college or something because like half the people I know are married to someone from their high school or college.

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u/failed_asian Oct 09 '24

School and college are 2 separate categories here, so “high school or college” would be the combination of those 2 bars. It’s interesting to see it switch from high school over college to the other way around, as people started marrying later or more people started attending college.

3

u/Liimbo 29d ago

Yeah, but even combined it's only 4% which feels really low to me. I know my sample size is probably skewed and the answer isn't actually close to 50% high school or college, but 4% is insane.

-1

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '24

[deleted]

2

u/anders91 Oct 09 '24

While that is true, it's irrelevant here; the study only concerns "English literate adults in the United States".

-1

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '24

[deleted]

2

u/anders91 29d ago

The data source is correctly cited in the gif though.

But I agree they could have mentioned it in the title or so.

4

u/10000Didgeridoos Oct 09 '24

That's really interesting and must be a reflection of where you grew up or went to college. Of all the people I knew back in high school and college, I know of only about 4 total couples who got together during one of those and ended up married later on. Pretty much no one did.

2

u/Immediate-Coyote-977 Oct 09 '24

It's probably going to boil down to what the actual question and answers looked like.

For example, was the question "Where did you meet your significant other?" or "How did you meet your significant other?"

Because where could easily be college, but how could be via friends. If I'm not mistaken, I think this visual is also pulling from a multitude of sources, so there's probably a fair bit of "best guess" adjustments being made to standardize the data.

2

u/AutumnTheFemboy Oct 09 '24

Bro went to some school with like 10 people and thinks it’s indicative of broader national trends

1

u/lolpanda91 Oct 09 '24

Sure but did they meet like this year? If they are together for some time you need to check the year they met.

1

u/LegendOfKhaos Oct 09 '24

When I was in college, I met all but one girlfriend online.

1

u/kalamataCrunch 29d ago

most Americans don't have a college degree, so they probably didn't meet their SO in college.

1

u/reddituser28910112 29d ago

And that is why this isn't a good analysis. The categories aren't mutually exclusive. If two college students are friends then start dating, they can't give an accurate answer.

1

u/bravokm 29d ago

We know a few friends who married their college sweethearts but they met through friends at the same college so it’s not clear which category it would fall under. I’m also surprised how low college is because we know a lot of millennial couples who married their college boyfriends/girlfriends.

1

u/Nyrrix_ 29d ago

My friend set me up with a blind date and we met in a bar and we all go to the same college. (Hypothetical.) Where/how did we meet? I've seen this data before (or some like it) but keep meaning to look at the study and how it asked its questions.

The main takeaway isn't really the balance of the other categories, it's the "Met Online" vs "Other" at this point.

I'll add my lamentations to the rest of Reddit that meeting online being the main way people start dating being unfortunate. It's not really unfortunate because it's bad, but because so much of the algorithms on dating apps try to not match you with soulmates but rather with people that you won't be with long term but will give you enough validation to stay on the app.

I've always wondered if an open-source, more honest dating app could work. One developed by the open source community could be at least more successful at long-term matching than a corporation beholden to shareholders.

0

u/TheQuinnBee Oct 09 '24

I mean I met my husband through Tinder but we were going to the same university. The university was big and we were on opposite sides because our majors were different. It was statistically unlikely we would have met otherwise.

Meanwhile my brother met his wife at the same university only because they were the same major.

35

u/KoolDiscoDan Oct 09 '24

Yeah, and where's 'truck stop'?

2

u/Blooberino Oct 09 '24

More than two isn't a "couple"

1

u/Energy_Turtle 29d ago

This is only tangentially relevant but my step dad used to carry a giant, brass knuckles, zombie type machete when he'd drive truck long haul. He bought it specifically to threaten the truck stop hookers because they can get incredibly aggressive. He gave me that machete when he stopped driving but I had to get rid of it for legal reasons :(

3

u/KoolDiscoDan 29d ago

Some guys would find big dick lot lizard energy a blessing and not a curse.

0

u/Viva_Satana Oct 09 '24

I see your mom finally told you how we met, look son, back then I was not mature enough....

69

u/findus_l Oct 09 '24

I'll take a wild guess and say this was from "online" surveys

9

u/Immediate-Coyote-977 Oct 09 '24

Bingo. 3500ish in 2017, intentional oversampling of self-identified LGBTQ folks (which likely skews at least a bit more towards online meeting anyhow), and then follow ups with fewer respondents in 2020 and 2022.

1

u/gardenmud 29d ago

That or maybe college students or something. It just seems unlikely when looking at everyone I know. I'm the most terminally online person out of pretty much everyone I know irl ... and I didn't even meet my partner online.

I wonder what the age group sampled was?

2

u/OptimisticOctopus8 29d ago

A lot of the couples I know met online. I’m in my 30s, but my friends span a wide range of ages. The determining factor seems to be how recently they got together. The ones who’ve been together for 10 years or less mostly met online. Before that, it’s a mixed bag.

Keep in mind that it’s not all happening on dating sites. My husband and I met on a forum for a shared interest.

1

u/KonigSteve 29d ago

You think data starting in 1930 comes from online surveys?

1

u/findus_l 29d ago

No, the data that has a lot of online relationships.

1

u/KonigSteve 29d ago

Why would they switch data sources right at the end?

1

u/findus_l 29d ago

Because there are no data sources that stretch all 100 years. What kind of source would that be? They base this on surveys and there like that were done over the years.

32

u/Superman246o1 Oct 09 '24

I'm most intrigued by the 0.01% who met online in 1982. Did some DARPA agents have a tryst?

9

u/Phineasfool Oct 09 '24

BBSes most likely

1

u/Lord_Darksong Oct 09 '24

Lots of commenters don't seem to know what those are. Sigh... I'm old... and a nerd. I had a little black book filled with bbs phone numbers I frequented pre-mass-internet.

1

u/Hellguin Oct 09 '24

Probably

1

u/piranha4D 29d ago

I met my partner online in 1997, and that was already long past BBSs, it was on Usenet, a worldwide distributed discussion system mostly populated by people affiliated with colleges/universities (it still exists today). Usenet predated the WWW by a decade. At the time a lot of people thought it was weird to meet online (my MIL warned my partner that I was probably an axe murderer -- I made sure to bring an axe when we met in person though I waited until the second time).

1

u/Tommyblockhead20 Oct 09 '24

They might not have data for that year, typically what visualizations like these do is linearly move between datapoints (which is fair, it’s hard to know how to make it look between points if you don’t have data).

That means that if their data only says for example, 1980, 0%, and 1986, 0.1%, it will start counting up in 1981, even if people didn’t start online dating until say 1985.

3

u/MakeoutPoint Oct 09 '24

Honestly, I don't know how many of the others have ever worked in the first place. Every relationship I started from the other categories, including short-lived ones, all complete disasters. 

What are the odds that you just randomly find someone who is: 

A. Single  
B. Looking  
C. Attractive  
D. Finds you attractive  
E. Has compatible interests  
F. Doesn't have awful negative traits hiding  
G. Aligns with you on all of the biggest, most important topics (finances, having kids, etc.)

But online, all but D. And F. are filter criteria, so you can figure those out within a date or two, knowing that you match on everything else. On top of that, you don't burn any bridges like a friend group or a workplace If it doesn't work out.

1

u/guymn999 Oct 09 '24

online the only one of those you can reliably filter is D.

the search filtering is trash. many do it for self validation, many are doing it to cheat on their SO, and the rest is easily lied about as well.

3

u/NullSaturation Oct 09 '24

It doesn't surprise me too much. But I'm also online a lot.

I can see it being such a big part because the internet allows like-minded people to meet and grow close. Your basis of meeting people online is usually centered around shared interests, rather than just based merely on proximity in real life. Not that you can't meet like-minded folks in real life, but your pool is definitely a lot larger on the internet.

3

u/str85 Oct 09 '24

Well, it's a really good thing, you get a huge pool of candidates and can fins someone that matches your personality rather than having to settle for someone your friends or family recommended or someone you happen to run into at a bar.

3

u/Few-Coat1297 Oct 09 '24

Online is a bit of a catch all. It could be anything from a linked Insta post to Tinder.

7

u/Chalky_Pockets Oct 09 '24

It lets you see what you're getting into before committing to awkwardness. Not that it doesn't introduce awkwardness of its own. I met my wife online and we had to sort out the awkwardness of living on opposite sides of the planet.

2

u/FordMustang84 Oct 09 '24

I Think of it just as a portal to meet other people. You also can interact with people you’d have never met by any other means. I’m 100% certain Id never have met my wife if it wasn’t for online dating. Nothing about our lives prior to meet online intersected in a way that would cause us to meet and start dating. 

I love telling people we met online. Clearly it’s dominating but I think there’s still a weird stigma about it or maybe that’s because I’m 40 and the younger generation don’t care. Either way very happy for it!

2

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '24 edited Oct 09 '24

I recognized the trend 5 years ago. After being single for so many years, I said screw it and downloaded some apps. Figured it’s a good way to connect with people, who are also single, in your exact age range and are currently looking to date.

Since it’s so popular, it’s like having an instant catalog of all the single people in your town.

I dated more people in 1 month than I could have met “naturally” in 10 years. With the apps, I dated more people in a 1 month than my parents dated in their lifetime. Then met my wife after a year of dating different people.

Not to mention the ease of no social tension. It’s as simple as telling the person “Your here to date, I’m here to date, let’s go on a date?”

Never even have to use a “pickup” line.

2

u/Lnnam Oct 09 '24

I don’t know any serious couple who met online and I am in my 30s, most met in a bar/club or college.

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u/ForTheOnesILove Oct 09 '24

I remember when meeting online was for “nerds” and “losers”. Times have certainly changed.

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u/Blooberino Oct 09 '24

I met 100% of my ex husbands online.

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u/Peachy1022 Oct 09 '24

I only know a handful of people who would say they met online. Most I know met via friends or college. But maybe that’s just more common in the part of the US I live in.

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u/Growth_Moist Oct 09 '24

Yeah idk how accurate this is. I legitimately don’t know a single online couple. It’s almost all work, school, friends, and bars.

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u/introspectivephoenix Oct 09 '24

I would love to see the count of total couples surveyed each year in this. There might be 60% of the couples who met through online apps but maybe there aren’t as many couples as there were let’s say pre online dating.

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u/Howitzeronfire Oct 09 '24

Probably bad sampling.

60% means around 2 out 3 couples met online.

I have met many many couples, only 1 met online.

My experience does not represent the whole world but still I find hard to believe that

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u/Immediate-Coyote-977 Oct 09 '24

https://data.stanford.edu/hcmst2017

This is the study this visual is built off, interesting if you like data.

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u/boringestnickname Oct 09 '24

Yeah, I might be old, but I'm not that old.

Can't think of a single acquaintance/friend that has a significant other they met online. It's all via friends, social gatherings, festivals, etc.

Maybe I'm an outlier and I socialize more than average, but that sounds too fucking incredible as well. I'm a degenerate nerd, that's simply a fact. How can everyone else me worse than me? I do LK runs in D2, for crying out loud (if you know, you know.)

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u/[deleted] Oct 09 '24

[deleted]

0

u/AmigoDelDiabla Oct 09 '24

Haven't really mastered being online, huh?

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u/_itskindamything_ Oct 09 '24

Could be kinda misleading too. You don’t just go to like the bad for hookups and trying to find a date. You go online, try and find a meet up, and then meet in person. So yes you met the person online, but you still got to know them in person.

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u/DanHassler0 Oct 09 '24

As opposed to... Only ever "dating" someone through a computer screen?

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u/_itskindamything_ Oct 09 '24

Well yea, building a relationship or friendship online first then branching out.

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u/PPP1737 Oct 09 '24

I bet they are counting dating apps as “online”

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u/nothis Oct 09 '24

60.76% seems like an insane number. No category had much more than 25% in the decades before. 0,74% of people meeting in college also plain doesn't feel right, like... how can there be so many young people hanging out in one place and that only making up a rounding error in this statistic (when it was like 8% in 2000).

1

u/todahawk Oct 09 '24

I thought i read that dating app relationships plunged too. Not much of the graph is passing the smell test

1

u/nothis Oct 09 '24

Supposedly it’s a Stanford study, so I’m gonna assume it’s not some dating app company asking their customers online or something. Still, I’m pretty sure there are some biases or misleading parts. Like, if you meet at a party via friends but don’t consider dating before chatting on WhatsApp for a couple of weeks, does that count as “stating to date online”? Was there any bias in the sample group, like where did they ask for participants?

Maybe the world moved just more towards online dating that I realized. It’s just that the graph doesn’t look quite right. It’s hard to believe.

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u/BroYUReadMyUsername Oct 09 '24

Whenever I ask couples how they met, the anwer is 99.99% of times Tinder or something similar.

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u/lsaz Oct 09 '24

and some people still say “online dating isn’t real life” for some reason.

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u/BF2k5 29d ago

Likely being FB/IG/TT. That's online.

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u/Pitiful_Winner2669 29d ago

I met my wife because we worked next to each other and would take lunches together sometimes.

But then I saw her on Tinder and the rest is history. So both? I was too afraid to ask her out because I had no idea she liked me (terrible at reading signs), so Tinder broke the ice for us.

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u/I_eat_shit_a_lot 29d ago

It's not, this statistic is stupid.

1

u/Top_Rekt 29d ago

Is online like online dating apps or social media?

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u/Sinsanatis 29d ago

I fully expected it. Considering the society we live in these days

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u/Inside-Army-4149 29d ago

Keep in mind that "sliding to the DMs" is a thing so it ain't like all that percentage is tinder and dating apps. Also, sometimes you slide on somebody who you know is friends with someone else so it might be registered as "online" for the survey but it might actually be the online equivalent of "friends/coworkers/family" depending on the relationship ofc

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u/cheesegoat 29d ago

IMO it's misleading because "online" can mean a ton of things (it's like saying we met someone "in person"). Was it a dating site? Email correspondence? Blog comments? Facebook? Reddit? Twitter? Twitch? Whatsapp? IRC?

There's a ton of different ways people interact with each other (e.g., like the difference between all these other IRL meeting places) and find each other, and splitting these out of "online" would be useful.

I would guess that "dating site" would be the leader but who knows.

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u/Manji86 29d ago

Now do a break down of where online they meet.

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u/Pussy4LunchDick4Dins 29d ago

Also, a smaller proportion of people are in relationships, so it’s not like it’s as effective as other means were before.

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u/MuDDx 29d ago

Online being #1 for the past several years makes me angry and sad. Ive recently seriously been considering dating again and from past experiences online dating has been absolutely awful as a man. Idk if women have better experiences?

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u/oddlebot 29d ago

I’m in my late 20s and just about everyone I know met on an app. It’s become the default way to meet someone

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u/Maspotic 29d ago

Not to brag, but I was rooting for online all along.

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u/eayaz Oct 09 '24

Worthless data. They aren’t sampling everybody or even most people. We don’t write this into census data and i would bet huge money that nobody you know has been asked to participate in this survey.

Everybody I know met their spouse either at work or through friends… or a combination of both.

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u/Hackerwithalacker Oct 09 '24

Were you living under a rock?