Twenty Years of Online Dating: Current Psychology and Future Prospects

Online dating is estimated to be a $2 billion business, 1 with 1 in 10 Americans reporting they have used an online dating site or mobile app, and nearly a quarter reporting that they found a spouse or partner online. While the Internet has been used in some way since its inception to find compatible partners, the domain name match.com was registered in 1995, and the option to use a specific Internet site to find a date or a mate has been studied in a systematic way for the past 10 years. In that time, what have we learned? There are distinct advantages to online dating, including: