The state of dating in 2026, in numbers

About three in ten American adults have tried a dating app, and more than half of under-30s have — yet fewer than a third of young singles are actively dating. Held together, those numbers describe the strangest dating market in decades. This page collects the rest of the picture, every figure linked to the researchers who produced it.

Two rules here: each number cites its original source — Pew, Stanford, the Census Bureau, peer-reviewed journals — and where the evidence is shaky, we say so instead of quoting it anyway.

Who's actually on the apps

Three in ten US adults (30%) have used a dating site or app, per Pew Research (2023) — a figure that held steady from 2019 to 2022, so "everyone's on the apps" was never quite true. Age changes the story: 53% of adults under 30 have tried one, against 20% of those 50 to 64.

Paying is more common than most people admit at brunch: 35% of online-dating users have paid for an app or an extra feature. The rate climbs with age and income — 41% of users over 30 have paid, versus 22% of the under-30s.

How couples actually meet now

Meeting online is now the single most common way US couples get together. Stanford's How Couples Meet and Stay Together survey found it overtook meeting through friends around 2017 — the analysis by Rosenfeld, Thomas and Hausen (PNAS, 2019) calls it "disintermediating your friends," which is the polite academic way of saying the matchmaker got automated.

Among all partnered adults, 10% met their partner online; among partnered adults under 30 it's 20%, and among LGB adults it's 24% (Pew, 2023). Online is now the front door. What's changed is how few people are walking through any door at all.

Do online-met couples last? A 2013 PNAS study of 19,131 respondents found slightly higher marital satisfaction and fewer breakups among couples who met online. One honest caveat: eharmony helped fund it. The independent Stanford data shows no penalty for meeting online either — take the direction, hold the decimals loosely.

The dating recession, quantified

The Institute for Family Studies' 2026 "State of Our Unions" report surveyed 5,275 unmarried adults aged 22 to 35. Of those who expect to marry someday — 86% of the sample — only 31% were actively dating at all. Women: 26%. Men: 36%. The gap between wanting a partner and looking for one is the whole story.

It isn't for lack of seriousness. In the same survey, 83% of young women and roughly three-quarters of young men said they want dating aimed at serious relationships. The most-cited barrier isn't apps or attitude — it's money: 52% named not having enough of it as their biggest obstacle to dating.

Marriage: later, but still wanted

The median American now marries for the first time at 28.8 (women) and 30.8 (men), per 2024 Census ACS data analyzed by Bowling Green's National Center for Family & Marriage Research. In 1980, a quarter of today's never-married-at-40 number would have seemed implausible: 25% of 40-year-olds have never married, up from 6% then (Pew analysis of Census data).

Later doesn't mean never wanted. Among never-married adults under 50, 63% of non-LGBTQ and 59% of LGBTQ adults say they want to marry someday (Pew, 2025). The desire didn't go anywhere. The timeline stretched.

What the numbers can't tell you

Only 21% of online-dating users believe an algorithm could predict whether two people will fall in love — and the 79% are right to be skeptical; no matching model has published evidence it can. We also looked for a solid figure on how long couples date before marrying, and found only blog numbers with no methodology behind them. When a statistic has no traceable source, the honest move is the one we made: leave it out.

The reference table

If a number here goes stale, the source links are the referee — we update this page when the underlying surveys do.