Michael Rosenfeld, Reuben Thomas and Sonia Hausen:
From the end of World War II until 2013, the most popular way heterosexual Americans met their romantic partners was through the intermediation of friends. One’s close friends and family have, probably since the beginning of time, been the essential network foci that enable connections to other people, i.e. the friends of one’s friends (Feld 1981). More distant ties have the potential to create a bridge to a new, previously unknown network of people and information (Granovetter 1973). Friends, the close and the not‐so‐close, have been historically a crucial source of connections to others. The rise of the Internet has allowed individuals in the dating market to disintermediate their friends, i.e. to meet romantic partners without the personal intermediation of their friends and family.
Rosenfeld and Thomas (2012) with data from 2009 showed that the percentage of heterosexual couples1 who met online had risen from 0% for couples who met before 1995 to about 22% for couples who met in 2009. In the 2009 data, Rosenfeld and Thomas showed that meeting online had grown but was still significantly behind friends as the most prevalent way heterosexual couples met. Furthermore, the 2009 data appeared to show that the rate of meeting online had plateaued for heterosexuals at around 22%. In this paper we present new data from a nationally representative 2017 survey showing that meeting online has continued to grow for heterosexual couples, and meeting through friends has continued its sharp decline. As a result of the continued rise of meeting online and the decline of meeting through friends, online has become the most popular way heterosexual couples in the U.S. meet.
It was not inevitable that the percentage of heterosexual couples who met online would have continued to grow beyond the previously documented 2005‐2009 plateau. Unlike gays and lesbians, heterosexuals can assume that most people they meet are heterosexuals also. Heterosexuals, because they constitute the large majority of adults, are usually in thick dating markets, where several potential partners are identifiable. The theorized advantage of face‐to‐face contact (Turkle 2015) could have limited the growth of online dating.
The traditional system of dating, mediated by friends and family, has long been theorized to be optimal for mate selection. The family system is historically predicated, in part, on catalyzing and promoting the most socially acceptable mating outcomes for the younger generation (Rosenfeld 2007). Meeting through friends and family provided guarantees that any potential partner had been personally vetted and vouched for by trusted alters. Classic work by Bott (1957) found that social closure had benefits in terms of relationship quality and duration.