39% of straight couples now meet online
More heterosexual couples today meet online, research finds. In fact, matchmaking is now the primary job of online algorithms.
In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, sociologist Michael Rosenfeld reports that heterosexual couples are more likely to meet a romantic partner online than through personal contacts and connections. Since 1940, traditional ways of meeting partners—through family, in church, and in the neighborhood—have all been in decline, Rosenfeld says.
Rosenfeld, a lead author of the study and a professor of sociology at Stanford University, drew on a nationally representative 2017 survey of American adults and found that about 39% of heterosexual couples reported meeting their partner online, compared to 22% in 2009.
Rosenfeld has studied mating and dating as well as the internet’s effect on society for two decades. Here, he explains the new findings:
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