Changes in how couples in the US met
Changes in how couples in the US met
108 comments
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This is a bad chart with lots of data issues. It apparently consists of two points, 1995 and 2017. The source is some data aggregator that isn't clear, and of course the differentiation between the categories is non-existent. what is the difference between "church," "friends," or "neighbors?" What is the difference between "school" and "college."
That said obviously there are more "online" couples between 1995 where the only options were AOL or IRC chatrooms and 2017 where actual dating apps existed that were easily accessible via your phone.
My Take: I agree the internet has changed society in the past 22 years. Thanks shitty chart from reddit. I now have a greater awareness of the significance of the internet.
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The perfect colinearity of most of the lines is very suspicious too.
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c/dataisugly
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This doesn't even look like it's from r/dataisbeautiful. It looks like r/coolguides. Not a compliment
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I don't buy that Bar/Restaurant has steadily increased as people have become more isolated.
My guess is it's a self-reporting error, where people meet on dating apps, but are reporting where they first met in person.
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The data ends in 2017. 6 year old data is pretty useless considering how much has changed in just the last 3
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It's not steadily. They only have two data points. All lines are straight. You can pretty much ignore what happens between the two years at the start and end, and you can also ignore any apparent trend because, hell, the last year might be an outlier, or maybe bars has been higher and is now trending down.
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Gotta remember it's only a percentage. Maybe the number didn't grow at all, just didn't decrease much as the others (and might include nightclubs too)
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I met my wife from a friend who I met online. So I indirectly met my wife online.
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Did you meet your online friend through your college's online church group and then discover they lived next door to you? :P
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Which happens to be a restaurant and a bar at night.
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I can't bring myself to try online dating, my friend that hit the jackpot and ended up marrying the first girl he went on a date with through whatever app he used tells me it works, as if his experience is absolute, but I hear about too many people getting ghosted by shallow dates to want to try. My self esteem couldn't take it.
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Oh yeah that happens a lot, especially if you're a dude. You just kinda have to learn to not take it personally, it's just the nature of those platforms unfortunately, they want you to use the app for as long as possible.
Dating apps shouldn't be for-profit businesses IMO, it just fucks everything up.
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Yeah, it sucks that you really have to treat dating as a numbers game (as in if I meet enough people, I'll eventually meet someone who likes me) and suppress the part of yourself that wants to get invested in each person you date.
I ended up together with my SO who I met online, but I wouldn't wish the process leading up to meeting her on anyone.
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This is anecdotal of course, but probably a good 60% or more of my friends and younger family members have met their long-term partners "on Tinder." I started dating my wife just weeks before the app launched in our area, but as far as I've seen it's a valid way to find yourself a spouse if that's what you're into
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It helps if you have thick skin. It is definitely tough if you don't deal with rejection well. Though I will say that it can help you develop some of those traits.
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If you're a male seeking female you are in a crowd of 10-20 males per female on any given app or website. Good luck.
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Perhaps I'm just paranoid, anxious and completely unfixable but I personally hate the concept of online dating. I feel like it's the same problem I have with most online services, being a product to advertisers and nothing more then a number. Once again it's probably me being paranoid but I'm at a point where I would rather just not go through the trouble of dating at all, especially since this data is from 2017 and has most likely favoured online dating further
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Same, I agree mostly. Though I find being able to date offline and in real life, for lack of better terms, to be worth it. It also puts you ahead of all the people who just use online dating in a way, because you have a real connection with the person you are talking to.
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I guess you're just using that as an excuse, because you're afraid of actually opening yourself up to the gender of your interests.
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I've never been the most confident or outgoing person, it's just not who I am. I'm also not gonna fill this thread with outcry or a winded sob-story. Instead I will say, use whatever medium you choose to find the person you wish to spend your time with. It's a short life, live how you wish to live, I'll do the same.
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the implication of this, is that algorithms now have actual influence on the natural selection of humans. small influence of course, but, unsettling to think about for too long.
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So tinder's long term goal is eugenics?
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from the tinder algorithm's perspective, it "wants" to select for babies that will grow up and use the app when they are older too
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expired
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The implication…
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My wife and I met on match.com. We bonded over our love of cats. We celebrated our 20th anniversary of our first date in March. We lived 5 miles apart before we met. We never would have met without the Internet.
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Odd to see so much hate on this thread for online dating. Maybe half of my relationships as an adult came from online dating, including my wife.
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Absolutely everything in your life can and will be turned into a commodity of capitalism for someone else to profit from, including the simple act of meeting other people. Community? That will be destroyed if it will help a millionaire make more money. Society will be atomised into little individual boxes for each person where they can then be turned into numbers and easily fed into algorithms that allow someone to profit.
Something that has been natural through community building and real social relationships people care about for thousands of years will be destroyed, there is in fact a profit motive to do so.
It's no wonder that loneliness is also at an all time high.
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Yeah I hate the commodification of every aspect of our lives. I'll hold out from using the dating apps for as long as possible
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Even setting aside dating apps, most irl spaces where it's generally socially acceptable to meet people are already profit oriented. I'm sure that a big part of this is because of creeps ruining it for everyone else by hitting on everyone at a park or whatever, but sometimes I wonder if part of it isn't also business owners trying to push people into bars and clubs.
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In a lot of irl spaces where I live, women can enter on discounted prices or for free, and this is done by the ownership to prevent the bar or club from becoming a sausage fest. Online dating doesn't have that, so it ends up with 80% of the userbase being guys, and all the issues that causes.
I'm not saying that online dating needs to copy that model and start getting gross/sleazy promoters, I'm just saying there's a reason why it's used at clubs and bars. A more equal gender split would do a lot to improve the online dating experience.
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“Online” needs to be broken down into “dating app” and “met playing World of Warcraft”
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I know people that met in Everquest 2
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That is super depressing
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Why? Online spaces can be great places for strangers to meet in safety, especially introverts.
The reason online dating sucks isn't because of anything inherent to online dating but because of the profit motive.
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The reason online dating sucks isn't because of anything inherent to online dating but because of the profit motive.
I agree, if things were different they'd be different. However, things are like they are.
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Well, that and because humans kinda suck in general.
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at least people with similar interests are meeting eachother
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Are they though? Isn't loneliness at an all time high among young people in industrialised nations? Could the commodification of relationships though apps be a possible reason for that?
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Visualization of our society becoming hyper atomized in real time. Can't meet via friends if you have no friends.
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Were 11% of people in 2017 really out there dating their coworkers? Isn't that hella awkward? What are you going to do if you have a messy breakup and you still have to see each other every day?
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"As coworkers" just mean "met through work", nothing else. It could also be that a majority of those 11% met in conditions that make is "sane" to date, meaning people who have absolutely nothing to do with one another at work, or one left, was about to leave, or temps (sales reps, contractors, etc).
If nothing else this shows how prevalent work is in life, and how lacking the other general dating options are...
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I have a friend who's a nice guy but seems hell-bent on dating at work. I keep telling him not to shit where he eats, so I'm hopeful he'll turn around some day.
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After seeing how stupid people have been exposed to be over the last several years, I fully believe 11% of the dating world were just that dumb.
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The answer is they're going to be adult about it. Even if the breakup gets a bit messy, it's still possible to maintain a good professional relationship. I've got several such ex-couples in my bubble. They're mature enough to make it work.
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Anecdotally there are 4 couples at work in my small division of about 60 people. All longterm employees.
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This is a really weird graph and kinda the opposite of "data is beautiful" lol
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Yeah, it's more of a "data exists, kind of."
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Data is man made horrors beyond my imagination
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care to expand on that?
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There’s nothing particularly pretty about this graph. It’s basically an infographic that has two data points and a bunch of lines.
My 3 year olds made prettier graphs from “join things on the left with things on the right”.
In the spirit of this comm, the data itself is secondary to the graph itself. So replace the text with gibberish and ask yourself if it’s still a nice graph. It isn’t particularly beautiful, no. You can feel strongly about the topic, but that’s not important.
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Data is manmade horrors beyond my imagination
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I'd be curious to see a more year-by-year breakdown. I feel like a lot of those would fluctuate.
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On the one hand, on the surface, my wife and I seem to anecdotally validate the data since we met online. On the other hand, it was 1994, and it was just a discussion BBS, not a dating site. We talked online for a few months before we met, and even then it was just a site meet-and-greet at a pizza place. We didn't start dating until months after that.
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I met my future wife in irc in 1994. In 1996 she moved from where she was to my state, and then in 2000 we got married, and have been ever since. The Internet was way different back then. I tell that to anyone using one of the current/past crop of dating apps.
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IRC was nice because you’re bullshitting in a giant group and maybe eventually you might find someone interesting. Interaction in dating apps seem like it would be so forced.
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I met my wife on a MUD in 94, in 96 I moved in with her and we broke up shortly after that. In 2001 we got back together and married 3 months later.
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Me and my wife didn't technically meet online, but in college. We re connected online years after and started a long distance relationship until we decided to move together and have been 12 years since that.
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I'm getting back into online dating, but all I know is Tinder and get matched with 18 year olds. What is a site where I can look for actual dates and for people my age.
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You can adjust the age filter in tinder I think. Never used the app though, but my friends say there is a setting for that.
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OkCupid worked pretty well for me.
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I've had the best luck with OKCupid, too. Other options with actual users include Hinge, Stir, and Bumble.
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I'd bet online has increased at least another 10% from 2017 until 2023.
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Online is defined a what? Dating apps, Social sites and forums?
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All of the above, but dating apps is likely the majority
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We met on a webcomic forum over a decade ago.
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I still don’t understand the concept of online dating.
What’s so hard to make friends through hobbies, and from there develop your relationship from? It’s far more likely you will find someone compatible if you are already friends with them first, than trying to form a relationship with a stranger that you literally know nothing about except for what they advertise online.
Of course, this would require people to actually go out and meet people. Maybe this is what they’re afraid of in the first place?
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It can be both.
My husband and I met through an online forum, and were friends for a long time before we decided to try a romantic relationship.
I think it's a fallacy to assume "online" only means dating sites these days. Many people's social lives are online, so that's where they meet friends and partners
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Yes, that’s what I meant. You start out as friends (whether you meet online or in real life), and develop from there as you get to know each other better.
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Plenty of people do hobbies because they want to do hobbies, not to find someone to date. If you date someone from your hobby group then break up, it can fuck up your hobby group. Same risk if you ask someone out and it's poorly received. Depending on the hobby it's harder to find new people for that than it is to find someone else to date. It's similar to dating someone at work in a lot of ways.
The big benefit to online dating is that people are there because they want to date someone.
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That’s not I meant. You don’t specifically go do hobbies to date people, but they are activities where you get to meet new friends.
And as you get to know them better, sometimes feelings are formed, and sometimes the feelings are reciprocated. That’s when you start dating and form a relationship. Even if the feelings aren’t reciprocated, you still have made a friend.
It’s a much more healthy way of forming relationship than trying to meet random people who most likely aren’t compatible with you. This was how most people met their spouses (as shown on the chart in the 1990s) - through friends and as coworkers. You get to know people better if you see and interact with them regularly.
If you think about it, dating people is really just getting to know each other first. So, I don’t understand why dating apps are designed to help with “dating” rather than “making new friends”. It’s much more healthy to use the online spaces to meet new friends rather than to specifically date someone through an app.
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some people have social anxiety or no real hobbies or hobbies that are mostly solitary
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108 comments