Online Dating: Two Decades of a Revolution in Mating, and its

Consequences

Reuben (Jack) Thomas

The City College of New York

Traditional Dating as Matching Through Social Structure

Introductions Institutions Public

Dating as a Search Problem

Sampling Online Daters

• Website-Specific Samples OKTrends

Hitsch et al (2010) Robnett & Feliciano (2011)

• Volunteer Panels E-Rewards Harris Interactive

• Random Samples from the Whole Population

Pew NORC\GSS GfK\KN

How Couples Meet & Stay Together Survey Data

Michael Rosenfeld & Reuben Thomas 2009

Nationally representative sample of over 3,000 couples, with oversample of same-sex couples.

Follow up surveys in 2010 and 2011

http://data.stanford.edu/hcmst

How 2009 Couples Met

Couples who met in the 2000s

A Revolution Without Consequences?

No more nor less couples than before

Online-met couples: don’t breakup more nor less aren’t more nor less satisfied aren’t more nor less interracial\ethnic aren’t more nor less inter-social-class

Hetero Couple Rate is Very Stable

50

55

60

65

70

75

80

85

90

95

100

1995 2002 2007

Partnerships

Marriages

Cohab+Marriages

No Satisfaction Difference

Self-Reported Satisfaction (scale from 1 to 5):

All Couples 4.47

Online-Met 4.51 (not signif. different)

Church-Met 4.67*** (significantly more)

School-Met 4.59** (significantly more)

No Longevity Difference

Breakup Odds-Ratio over 2 years:

Online-met vs Others 1/1

(no difference)

Met-thru-Friends 1.65/1* vs Others

(over 50% more likely to breakup)

Mostly, Online-met Couples aren’t different pairings

Odds Ratios that Online-Met Couples are:

Different Race .82 (not signif.)

Different Education .98 (not signif.)

Different Moth. Ed. 1.01 (not signif.)

Different Religions 1.43* (significant)

Different Age (4yrs) .67 (not signif.)

Segregation: By Preference, By Place, By Interface

The Community-less-ness of Online dating

End

Examples of OkTrend Uncertainty

• Is there a positive correlation among men between age and desire for rough sex, or do very different populations of old vs young men use Okcupid?

• Does Oktrends show that women become more confident as they age, or do they show that their website oversamples confident older women, but gets a broader range of younger women?