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. 2019 Sep 3;116(36):17753-17758.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1908630116. Epub 2019 Aug 20.

Disintermediating your friends: How online dating in the United States displaces other ways of meeting

Michael J Rosenfeld  1 , Reuben J Thomas  2 , Sonia Hausen  3
Affiliations

Disintermediating your friends: How online dating in the United States displaces other ways of meeting

Michael J Rosenfeld et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

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.

Keywords: Internet; dating; disintermediation; friends.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Source: HCMST 2009 and HCMST 2017 waves. Consistent with Rosenfeld and Thomas (3), all trends are from unweighted Lowess regression with bandwidth 0.8 (39), except for meeting online, which is a 5-y moving average because meeting online takes place in the more recent and data-rich part of the data (N = 2,473 for HCMST 2009 and N = 2,997 for HCMST 2017). Friends, family, and coworkers can belong to either respondent or partner. Percentages do not add to 100% because the categories are not mutually exclusive; more than one category can apply.
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