You must agree that the names Tinder, Badoo or Bumble are known even to those who have never used online dating applications. We see them everywhere — from advertising the services themselves to articles on the Web with dating stories that we stumble upon while surfing the Internet.
Have you ever wondered how many people actually use dating sites or apps around the world?
According to the Business of Apps portal, in 2022 the number of active users of dating apps exceeds 330 million people. For clarity, we can trace how this figure has changed over the past five years:
- 2017 — 241 million
- 2018 — 250 million
- 2019 — 283 million
- 2020 — 293 million
- 2021 — 323 million.
We see that the most rapid jump in the popularity of dating services occurred in 2020. No wonder, because this year was the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. For millions of people, the Internet became the only way to maintain social ties, communicate with friends, family and loved ones, and make new acquaintances.
If we talk about the US alone, there are over 50 million active users of dating sites and apps today.
Pretty impressive number, isn’t it? And despite the recession of the pandemic and the normalization of life, it continues to increase. Albeit not at such a fast pace as in 2020-2021.
N.B. We are talking about active users at the current moment, and not about the total number of those who have used dating services at least once. Otherwise, the numbers would be ten times higher.
What dating platforms do modern people prefer?
To begin with, let’s look at the purpose for which people generally use dating sites and applications. Spoiler: not everyone is looking for love here.
So why do people register on dating sites:
- Just to have fun: men — 51%, women — 43%.
- To find new friends: men — 41%, women — 41%.
- To communicate with interesting people: men — 28%, women — 18%.
- To find love: men — 20%, women — 17%.
- To meet a person for sex: men — 18%, women — 5%.
- To get married and start a family: men — 12%, women — 10%.
- To test your partner for loyalty: men — 5%, women — 5%.
- Other reasons: men — 13%, women — 21%.
This shows us that sites for searching for a potential couple today turn out to be used by people with completely different goals. And the proportion of those who are really determined to find their love here is quite small.
The audience of dating sites and apps — who are these people?
According to the latest statistics, the largest group of users of dating sites are millennials. That is, people born between 1981 and 1996. Today it is one of the most numerous and active social groups using the Internet. Zoomers are stepping on their heels — a generation born from 1997 to 2016. For them, the Internet has become an integral part of life. In fact, they do not know the world without the Internet, unlike millennials.
But dividing the audience of dating sites into generations is too rough and inaccurate. Because each generation consists of many social groups and subgroups. And among them there are users both more active and less.
Who specifically uses dating services the most?
- Active young people who seek to expand their circle of friends by any means available.
- Successful entrepreneurs who do not have time for offline dating and endless trips to early “trial” dates.
- Shy people who are embarrassed to meet offline and prefer online communication.
By the way, in recent years, various niche sites and dating apps focused on certain user groups have been of particular interest to users. For example, the site EliteSingles — for wealthy but lonely people, Luxy — for millionaires, supermodels, celebrities and leaders of large companies, Trek Passions — for geeks, Purrsonals — for cat lovers. There are hundreds of such examples. If you wish, you can even find very unusual niche dating sites. For example, for lovers of horoscopes, for men with mustaches and girls who like them, for believing Christians, for farmers, and so on. Naturally, the audience here is much smaller than on Tinder or Badoo. But finding someone on the same wavelength is usually much easier.
An interesting fact: For millions of Internet users, online video chat has become the best alternative to classic dating sites and apps because of convenience and efficiency.
Why do people increasingly prefer online video chats? There are several reasons for this:
- Video chats are more convenient and easier to use. There is no need for a long registration, filling out profile data and studying all the functionality, which is often frankly redundant.
- In video chat you save a lot of time, because you can communicate with new people just a couple of seconds after you enter the site or launch the application.
- Online video chats are often either completely free or provide paid features for a minimal amount. If you have used typical dating apps, then you know that this can be quite expensive.
- The choice of video chats today is simply huge. Among the most popular sites we can name OmeTV, Chatrandom, Monkey, Omegle, Azar and live chat with girls CooMeet. They have proven themselves well, and many of them have not lost their relevance for 5-10 years.
- Video chats, like other dating services, are well suited for a wide range of users, regardless of their goals — communication on interesting topics, finding new friends or a soulmate.
If you think that the audience for video chat is an exclusively young generation we hasten to convince you of the opposite. There are a lot of people of mature and even older age. And this audience is no less active and interested in communication.
Plus in video chats you can meet stars and celebrities of the first magnitude. For example, Jason Statham, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Robbie Williams, Ashton Kutcher and many others appeared in video chats. And the number of popular bloggers who record their viral videos in video chats and capture users’ reactions cannot be counted. So online video chat is also a great opportunity to chat with your idol. If you’re lucky, of course. But why not at least give it a try?
In the near future, there will be even more users of dating sites
It would be naive to believe that the growth of interest in websites, dating applications and online video chats is caused only by the pandemic and quarantine measures around the world. Even if these factors did not exist, the number of users of dating services would still increase.
Why? First of all, because the population of the planet is growing rapidly. And the larger the population, the more who suffer from loneliness.
At the time of writing this article, in the spring of 2022, the world’s population is 7.9 billion people and continues to increase. By the end of the year, the 8 billion mark will definitely be overcome. To better understand the rate of growth, remember that in 2020 the world’s population was 6 billion. And in 1980 — 4.4 billion. According to the forecasts of many experts, in 2030, 8.5 billion people will live on the planet, in 2050 — 9.7 billion, and in 2100 — 14.8 billion. That is, almost twice as many as now.
With the growth of the population, we simultaneously observe the destruction of social ties and the difficulty in creating new ones. It’s a paradox, but the more people around, the more the average person feels loneliness. Because they are all strangers who don’t care about you. And dating services are one of the few ways to fix that. So in the future, interest in them will only increase.
