Dating trends: what verifiable data shows

Most dating statistics you see online are a number with no date, no sample and no question wording. This post uses only figures that come with all three, and says what each one can't tell you. Where a number is from 2022 or 2017, it says so. Nothing here predicts the next five years.

How many people use dating apps

Pew Research Center asked 6,034 U.S. adults between July 5 and 17, 2022, and published the results on February 2, 2023. Its numbers:

30% of adults had ever used a dating site or app, the same share as in 2019. Pew reported that 9% had used one in the past year.
53% of adults under 30 had used one, against 37% of those aged 30 to 49.
34% of men and 27% of women had used one.
Among people who had used them, 53% called their overall experience very or somewhat positive (57% of men, 48% of women).

Limits: these are self-reports, in one country, in one month. "Ever used" includes someone who tried an app once in 2014 and deleted it. The survey says nothing about how often people use apps now or which ones.

How couples meet

The best long-run data on this comes from the How Couples Meet and Stay Together survey, analyzed by Michael Rosenfeld, Reuben Thomas and Sonia Hausen in a paper published in PNAS in 2019. Using the 2017 wave (about 3,000 respondents answering how they met), they estimated that 39% of heterosexual couples in 2017 met online, up from about 2% in 1995. Meeting through friends fell from 33% to 20% over the same span. Meeting online passed meeting through friends around 2013.

Limits are real here too. The survey only asks people who are already in couples, so it can't count the people who used apps and didn't end up partnered. The main trends cover heterosexual couples only. Answers are recalled, not recorded at the time, and the authors note that cumulative response rates were low (11% in 2017). Different sources also use different definitions: Pew's 2022 survey found that 10% of partnered adults (20% of those under 30) said they met their current partner on a dating site or app, which is a different question from "where did you first meet."

Who is single and who is looking

Pew's same July 2022 survey found about 3 in 10 U.S. adults were single, unchanged since 2019. Among singles, 42% said they were looking for a relationship or casual dates in 2022, down from 49% in 2019. For men that was 50% (down from 61%). For women it was 35%, which Pew said wasn't a statistically significant change from 38%. Pew also found that 63% of men under 30 were single, compared with 34% of women under 30.

Those are group averages from one survey. They don't describe any individual person you'll meet, and "single" in a survey means no partner, not "unable to find one." "Looking for casual dates" can mean different things to different people, which is the subject of casual dating expectations.

Another source is a February 2026 report from the Institute for Family Studies, "State of Our Unions 2026: The Dating Recession" (the title is the authors' own). It's based on the 2025 National Dating Landscape Survey of 5,275 unmarried Americans aged 22 to 35. About 30% were dating, casually or exclusively. 51% said they were single and interested in a relationship (60% of men, 47% of women), and the most-cited barrier was money (52%). The report focuses on the 86% who expect to marry, so it leaves out people who don't, and its authors list further gaps, including that it didn't track how casual dating becomes committed. It's a single survey from a family-research group, so treat it as one data point, not a consensus.

Marriage timing

The U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, as analyzed by Bowling Green State University's National Center for Family and Marriage Research, put the 2024 median age at first marriage at 30.8 for men and 28.8 for women. Since 2008 that's up 2.8 and 2.6 years. Other Census series (the Current Population Survey) give slightly different figures, so check which one a source uses before comparing.

The business side

Match Group, which owns Tinder and Hinge, reported on February 3, 2026 that its 2025 revenue was $3.5 billion, flat on the year, and that its payers (people who pay a subscription or buy features) fell 5% to 14.2 million. The company defines a payer as a unique user per brand per month, and says totals may double-count people who pay at more than one brand. Payers are not the same as users, and the release says nothing about how many relationships formed.

Headline versus evidence

You'll see	What's verified	What it can't show
"Most couples meet online"	39% of heterosexual couples in a 2017 survey	People who never partnered; same-sex couples; anything after 2017
"Young people have stopped dating"	30% of unmarried 22 to 35-year-olds dating (2025 survey)	Whether that is lower than any earlier year; the survey has no matching baseline here
"Apps are dying"	5% fewer payers across Match Group in 2025	Total use of all apps; free users; other companies
"Young men are single"	63% of men under 30 vs 34% of women under 30 (2022)	One survey, group averages, no explanation of why

What to do next

Check any statistic you plan to repeat. Find the date, sample size and the question asked. If you can't find all three in two minutes, don't use it. The same check applies to dating lessons from film and TV, which come with no sample at all.
Compare like with like. Pew's "ever used" and Rosenfeld's "how we met" are different questions. Don't set one against the other.
Read the apps comparison and the in-person comparison side by side: Hinge vs Tinder vs Bumble and online dating vs cold approach.
Decide your own split. Pick a number of hours a week for each way you meet people, say 2 hours online and 3 in person, and keep it for a month.
Track your own result. Your numbers beat any national average for what you should do next. A simple notes file works, or log in-person approaches as Success or Rejected in Run Game and compare after four weeks.
Come back to the data in a year. Pew and Census publish updates, and a trend takes more than one survey to confirm.

If apps feel like a grind, should you delete dating apps lays out the costs and benefits of each choice, and dating culture today covers the wider picture.