The dating world has seen a sea change in the past century. While at the beginning of the 1930s, couples met through family, friends, school and other social settings, over a few decades, the workplace or an eatery became a preferred place for meeting and connecting with each other. The 1990s saw a major shift in the way people found their partners as the internet made it more convenient for people to connect with each other.
Content expert James Eagle shared a fascinating animated chart on LinkedIn that captures almost a century of dating and how people met their partners from 1930-2024, offering an insight into how the advent of the internet changed the way people found their partners. From relying on their families, friends, or meeting in offline settings like a restaurant or church, people eventually shifted to dating websites to find their spouses. The analysis was done by Stanford University through an extensive survey, published in the journal PNAS. It showed how online dating displaced other ways of meeting.
