Graph of the Day: How Couples Meet, 1940-2020
Once we met through family and friends; now we meet online
Here’s a graph that goes viral from time to time; perhaps you’ve seen it before. It shows the changing ways that couples met from 1940 to 2020. The main story, of course, is the red line. Note that the category “met online” doesn’t just refer to online dating or dating apps, but also includes meeting through social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram.
The graph is from a 2019 paper by Michael Rosenfeld, Reuben Thomas, and Sonia Hausen. Here’s the abstract; note in particular the last line:
We present data from a nationally representative 2017 survey of American adults. For heterosexual couples in the United States, meeting online has become the most popular way couples meet, eclipsing meeting through friends for the first time around 2013. Moreover, among the couples who meet online, the proportion who have met through the mediation of third persons has declined over time. We find that Internet meeting is displacing the roles that family and friends once played in bringing couples together.
In 2020, I was interviewed about the study by Javier Sinay for RED/ACCIÓN, an Argentinian news website. Javier asked me: “What does this graphic reveal about our social environment? Does the nature of couple-love change when meeting online?” This was my response:
The graph reveals something about the modern world that doesn’t just apply to dating: More and more of human life is taking place online.
Online dating doesn’t change the nature of love itself – love is psychologically and biochemically the same today as it was when we were hunter-gatherers wandering the African savannah. But it does greatly increase the pool of possible partners. That means people are more likely to meet someone very similar to themselves – but also more likely to think “This person isn’t perfect for me; I’m going to back to the app to keep on looking.”
Addendum
Here’s animation of the same data, which I spotted on
’s Twitter/X feed recently. It’s incredible how much things have changed in the last decade or so compared to the eighty years before that.
It’s fairly easy to explain, I’ve brought this up to gay friends for years. You’re at the center of a unit circle of radius one kilometer, D is the population density of candidates. The number of candidates to meet in that unit circle is roughly π * D. The number of candidates two kilometers out is 4 * π * D etc. The candidate pool grows exponentially up to the point where population density drops off. However the ability to meet physically also drops off, probably e^-KD function -people one kilometer away are easier to meet than 20 kilometers away.
When you go out, the candidate pool is in a radius of 10 m but much easier to physically meet.A neighbor or friend perhaps 100m, slightly more difficult to meet. Each mode has its radius, and candidate pool.
The problem with gay “dating” apps (e.g. meeting for sex) is the candidate pool size and distance. You could easily chat for hours with people you will never meet, which ends up “blocking” you from people you would meet. While the candidate pool is huge, time wasting is stupendous and you end up chatting instead of getting naked. I have attractive, horny friends who spend way too much time chatting with men 2000 miles away. I note that my friends get laid more often going to bars or dinners than apps now.
It’s the best protection against STD’s I’ve ever seen.