It's been trending this way for years, but seeing it graphed out like this is shocking.
What do you think are the effects of this drastic change?
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
625 points (95.9% liked)
Data is Beautiful
4938 readers
248 users here now
A place to share and discuss visual representations of data: Graphs, charts, maps, etc.
DataIsBeautiful is for visualizations that effectively convey information. Aesthetics are an important part of information visualization, but pretty pictures are not the sole aim of this subreddit.
A place to share and discuss visual representations of data: Graphs, charts, maps, etc.
A post must be (or contain) a qualifying data visualization.
Directly link to the original source article of the visualization
Original source article doesn't mean the original source image. Link to the full page of the source article as a link-type submission.
If you made the visualization yourself, tag it as [OC]
[OC] posts must state the data source(s) and tool(s) used in the first top-level comment on their submission.
DO NOT claim "[OC]" for diagrams that are not yours.
All diagrams must have at least one computer generated element.
No reposts of popular posts within 1 month.
Post titles must describe the data plainly without using sensationalized headlines. Clickbait posts will be removed.
Posts involving American Politics, or contentious topics in American media, are permissible only on Thursdays (ET).
Posts involving Personal Data are permissible only on Mondays (ET).
Please read through our FAQ if you are new to posting on DataIsBeautiful. Commenting Rules
Don't be intentionally rude, ever.
Comments should be constructive and related to the visual presented. Special attention is given to root-level comments.
Short comments and low effort replies are automatically removed.
Hate Speech and dogwhistling are not tolerated and will result in an immediate ban.
Personal attacks and rabble-rousing will be removed.
Moderators reserve discretion when issuing bans for inappropriate comments. Bans are also subject to you forfeiting all of your comments in this community.
Originally r/DataisBeautiful
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think this graph is fake. The way the data is presented is confusing, but the study they are citing doesn't seem to confirm anywhere close to the 60% figure, it seems to be saying 11.5% instead: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/ICPSR/studies/38873/datasets/0001/variables/W1_Q24_MET_ONLINE?archive=icpsr
This lower figure also seems to line up with other studies: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/02/02/key-findings-about-online-dating-in-the-u-s/
The graph is branded with the logo of "Marriage Pact", which seems to be a dating app/service targeting college students. Maybe they made it as a form of (deceptive, unethical) advertising? I don't know, reverse image search just shows similarly unsourced social media posts, I can't confirm anything about its origins.
I think the difference is that variable is the entire population of coupled adults. Of course not 60% of all couples met online, but I'd believe 60% of couples that met this year met online.
I think there's a question of denominator, rather than percentage, involved here.
What happens when you have a pre-online standard of 100 new interactions a year in a population of 100k single-and-looking-to-mingle daters. Then you introduce dating apps, and you've still got the base-load 100 new interactions happening normally, but now you've got apps which allow you to make thousands of interactions a month rather than a hundred a year.
Now a hundred of those power-users on Grinder all start meeting up and fucking online. 100 unique combinations gets you 4950 "couples that met" in a year. Yeah, the "met up" only lasted for the duration of a naked high-five, but its points on the board!
Compare that to 100 couples that meets outside the app, but are doing it at the more stately pace of once-a-month (so, 3 times in 100 days). rather than as fast as they can swipe through the app. 300 unique "met ups" by comparison. Kinda high by historical standards but infintessimal to the ass-slapping orgy of dating the online community allows.
As someone who watches friends on these apps go on dates two or three times a week, but never settle down (because the focus of these apps is hooking up, not settling down, and the system is engineered to keep you engaged and swiping) I put forward the hypothesis that "How Couples Met" isn't seeing a decline in non-app interactions but an enormous surge among a particular rarified group of power users milling their way through the library of potential hook-ups online.
I'd also posit that some number of these hook-ups are purely artificial (bot accounts, catfishing, onlyfans promotions, or other phony profiles) that exist purely to encourage lonely people to engage with the system and don't actually signify human-to-human interactions. As evidence of this, I'd point you to restaurants using dating apps to dupe users into becoming customers.
See, I will agree with you, though not because of your reasoning (which very well might be spotless), but because of the phrase "ass-slapping orgy".