Brilliant graphic shows how couples have traditionally met. The internet definitely changed the dating game

Being attracted to someone impacts the human brain in such a way that it triggers a sense of longing for a romantic partner. With the world growing more connected than ever before in the digital age, dating apps have become platforms where couples interact and explore their chemistry. The way that interaction between couples has changed between 1930 and 2024 was recently highlighted by James Eagle through a detailed infographic on LinkedIn.

The caption on Eagle's post read, “How did you meet your spouse? Times have changed and this #datavisualisation shows just how much this is true. We have shifted away from traditions, where we were once introduced by friends and family or married our high school sweethearts. It seems the internet has even disrupted our love lives.” This was accompanied by an animated graphic originally designed and posted on YouTube by Data Is Beautiful (@DataIsBeautifulOfficial). According to the video description, this graphic is part of a 2017 study conducted by researchers at Stanford University, who published the findings in the journal PNAS in August 2019.

“We show in this paper that meeting online has displaced friends as the main way heterosexual couples in the United States meet,” the authors noted in the paper before adding, “Traditional ways of meeting partners (through family, in church, in the neighborhood) have all been declining since World War II. Meeting through friends has been in decline since roughly 1995.”

Earlier, the first meeting between couples was similar to scenes from movies, where people either run into each other at supermarkets or are introduced by common friends. This trend lasted for quite a while from the end of World War II until 2013. But as the internet took over every aspect of life, people started meeting their potential romantic partners without the involvement of common friends or family members. An entire lineup of apps has gamified the dating scene, boiling it down to chance interactions via swipes and texts.

“The percentage of heterosexual couples* who met online had risen from 0% for couples who met before 1995 to about 22% for couples who met in 2009,” the researchers wrote in the paper, and explained, “Now that the Internet makes a large choice set of potential partners available, the intermediation of friends and family has relied upon less. The role of the family as matchmaker had been already in decline for most of the late 20th century, as later age at first marriage and the independence of young adults has removed dating and matchmaking from the oversight of parents.”

The graphic in question was circulated across social media by numerous people. For example, Andriy Burkov (@burkov) shared this graphic in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that amassed nearly 6 million views and more than 600 comments in less than 24 hours. Commenting on it, @myfrontpagegift wrote, “What a mind-boggling shift!” while @illerbitsk brought attention to the portion of the graph that showed that even in the 1980s, 0.01% of couples met online. “I’m a bit curious about the 0.01% meeting online in 1981,” they said.

“The big drop in school and college is surprising,” commented @a6and0on, referring to the decline of couples meeting as school sweethearts. @thepateleffect said, “There should be a sitcom on this,” whereas, @fralundh wrote, “It’s no longer ‘how did you meet’ but ‘what app did you use.’”