Getting Together Online

A recent study by Professors Michael J. Rosenfeld, from the Department of Sociology at Stanford University, shows that young people are finding their romantic matches through the internet more than any other method.  

It used to be that most heterosexual couples would find their romantic partner through the intermediary of friends or family. However, this has slowly been declining since the creation of online dating websites and apps.  

According to the study, “In 2009, meeting through friends was by far the most common way heterosexual couples met, and this had been true for 60 years since the immediate post World War II period. Since 2009, however, meeting through friends has declined sharply, and meeting online has continued to grow.” 

The study compares the use of online dating to cut out the intermediary to other areas in which the internet has removed the middleman. “Human travel agents used to be necessary to book hotel and airline flights until the internet travel brokers disintermediated the human travel agents.” 

Meeting online finally took over as the most popular way to meet a partner as of 2017, meaning that you’ll likely start hearing more people name Tinder as the way they met- rather than a physical venue.