[StopTheWorld]

Professor Michael Rosenfeld at Stanford does research on how heterosexual couples in the US meet ( https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/ ).

In 1940, over 50% met via friends or family. About 36% met at school.

In 2021, about 20% met via friends or family. About 10% met at school. Over 50% met online. So the majority of US couples are now meeting via profit-maximizing corporations. He has a 2019 paper on this (and it has only increased since that paper).

[jrussino]

Interestingly, there was another big shift happening from 1940-1980:

- in 1940, the top 3 were: met through family, met through friends, met in primary school. In that order, but pretty much equal

- From 1940-1980, two of those three (family, primary school) trended sharply downward, as did "met in church", while these trended upward: met through friends, met in bar or restaurant, met as or through coworkers, met in college. "met through friends" was by far the most common circa 1980

- starting in 1995 "met online" sees a sharp rise, and by 2010 it has overtaken them all.

The only other category that was still on the rise after 2010 was "met in a bar or restaurant". Is that really increasingly common? I have a strange feeling that some of those are just people too embarassed to say they met online...

Anyway, my point is there was (perhaps unsurprisingly) already a big shift going on 1940-1980, namely that the immediate family, church, childhood friends became less dominant in people's lives and friends, work, commercially-facilitated interactions (bars and restaurants) became more central. Did we learn anything from that adjustment? Were people in the 80's and 90's talking ad worrying about this the way we're talking today about the way social interactions are replacing the "old" ones?

(also, the values for "met online" on that graph seem to be small but non-zero in the 1980s! I'd like to hear the stories of some of those couples...)

[5-]

> stories of some of those couples

this one, about two people having met online, was written in 1879 (not a typo):

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24353

[atribecalledqst]

> (also, the values for "met online" on that graph seem to be small but non-zero in the 1980s! I'd like to hear the stories of some of those couples...)

IIRC Jason Scott's BBS documentary mentions this a bit. There's a couple that shows up a number of times that met on a BBS.

[silisili]

> I have a strange feeling that some of those are just people too embarassed to say they met online

Probably right. I don't really get the stigma, but I've known a few people personally who told the same lie and found later it was online. One in particular had a huge elaborate story about their bar meeting. His wife told me later one day he basically selected her from a website.

So like most questions, probably worth taking self reporting with a giant dose of salt.

[CPLX]

If I message with someone on a dating app a few times and then make arrangements so the first time I encounter them in the physical world is a bar where did I “meet” them?

The subjective answer to this question might be at least part of this statistic.

Also you may be underestimating the number of people who pair up as part of nightlife outings. Based on my many many outings in cities around the world in recent years it does seem at a glance that people are still engaged in the practice.

[lawlessone]

I'm surprised dating sites work well enough that 50% of customers meet via it. They've no incentive to help you leave.

[chongli]

I'm surprised dating sites work well enough that 50% of customers meet via it

It’s not that surprising when you think of selection effects. Suppose you have a sack full of marbles. Half of the marbles are pink and the other half are random assorted colours. Now reach into the sack and pull out two marbles. If they match then they get married and you set them aside, otherwise return them to the sack.

It’s easy to see that it won’t take very long until hardly any pink marbles remain. After that it’s going to be a total crapshoot to pull out a pair of matching marbles. Maybe some more pink ones get added at a later date but they’ll match and get removed.

The fundamental problem with dating sites cannot be solved by any business model: marriageable people (or otherwise people who can form and maintain a longterm relationship) are removed from the pool of potential dates. What’s left are all those who can’t or won’t form relationships. These “misfits” (for lack of a better term) tend to get concentrated in the pool over time. Perhaps it even gets so bad that marriageable people give up and just avoid dating sites.

[autoexecbat]

They probably have some internal churn targets to hit, else people will start to figure out that the app isn't worth their time and try a different one

[smcameron]

50% of heterosexual couples meeting online is not the same as 50% of customers of dating sites entering a relationship.

It could be the case that say, only 10% of dating site customers end up in a relationship, and this 10% amounts to 50% of the total couples, and the math would work out.

E.g.: suppose the total population is 1000 people, 500 of which are on a dating site, and the total number of couples is 20, 10 of which were formed via the dating site and 10 of which were formed by other means, and 960 people are out of luck.

[KittenInABox]

It might not be dating sites. I've heard of people in WoW guilds dating back in the day.

[fsckboy]

>They've no incentive to help you leave

they have plenty of incentive to get you some dates, after that what are they gonna do?

[ars]

There is no shortage of potential customers, there is a shortage of actual customers. Anything they can do to attract more business helps them. So if they have tons of success stories they'll get far more business.

It would be different in a saturated market, where they might want to try to keep people on the site, but that's not the case here.

[itishappy]

Customer success stories are free advertising.

[darby_nine]

They just need to work once. Who knows how many failed attempts at finding someone preceded the one that suck.

[kelipso]

Wonder what that percentage would look like as a function of relationship length.

[maeil]

FWIW here in Korea the 1940 statistic still holds, yet I don't think youth mental health is any better.

[mensetmanusman]

There has also been about a 70% drop in number of marriages since the 50s.

[nozzlegear]

And as someone else noted, a significant drop in the number of divorces since its peak in the 1980s.

[dv_dt]

Hasn't the divorce rate also gone down. So one question is if the method of meeting is improving that rate

[lolinder]

Marriage rates are also plummeting, so it's more likely that the divorce rate has gone down simply because people wait to get married until they've proven it works. A couple that cohabitates and then separates doesn't get logged in the divorce rates.

[bilbo0s]

Yeah.

Marriage rate and divorce rate have plummeted since 1940.

Probably not much to do with electronic media there. A lot more likely that financial and social pressures are squeezing what were previously considered cultural imperatives. ie - church, marriage, home ownership, etc.

[tivert]

> Over 50% met online.

Is that actually true? I read something recently (in an recent article in a major publication about how online dating sucks and people are getting tired of it), that the proportion is much lower. Like people put all this money and effort into dating apps, but must successful relationships still form outside of them.

[watwut]

Online is not necessary the same as dating app. It can be any online group where people have an in person meetup once in a while.

[slightwinder]

"Online" these days more likely means social networks, games and other services where people with common interest meet. Meaning, you meet through your hobby, instead of a dedicated service for meeting or because you just happen to live in the same area.

[SergeAx]

Since around 1997 all my romantic partners did have a solid online footprint. However, I can't say I met any of them online. Every time it was 1) getting merely acquainted on a forum or in a social network, 2) some kind of offline event initiated by users took part 3) "oh, hi, are you <handle> from <site>?"

I don't think it may be counted as "we met online", and specifically I never had any meaningful relationships via dating sites/apps.

[Animats]

Well, of course. Today, approaching someone of the opposite sex whom you haven't previously chatted with online is creepy.

[BoredPositron]

Really? How old are you? There are still school, work, parties, clubs, bars... I even know a couple that met in their church.