About 10 years ago, while we were cozily roasting golden marshmallows around a campfire with some new friends, my dad asked the couple we were with, “How did you two meet?”
The anxiety was palpable. “Online,” the man replied gruffly.
Online dating, which until recently was secretive, almost embarrassing, and certainly untalked about, has taken over most of dating. Even if you’ve never tried it yourself, you’ve probably picked up at least one friend’s phone and swiped left and right on countless face photos. (If you haven’t tried it yet, you should. It’s a lot of fun.)
Approximately 70 million Americans use dating apps, over 40% of couples met through online dating, and over 30% of currently married couples met online, making dating apps by far the most common way people meet.
One of the biggest complaints about online dating is the belief that there are plenty of fish in the sea and that the grass is always greener on the other side. But what happens when artificial intelligence joins the grass? It’s a whole new game, and it could be your chance to get the upper hand.
According to Vanity Fair, online dating is the equivalent of a “dating apocalypse,” filled with no-strings-attached sex and a never-ending supply of new dates (some people even book two dates in one night, but we won’t comment on that here).
But it can also be really hard and time-consuming: On average, people spend more than two hours a day online dating, and that’s just swiping and messaging, not including the time spent meeting in person. It’s almost a full-time job.
And for every 57 people you swipe and message, you’ll likely meet just one in person, meaning dating apps are a numbers game and are quickly becoming a game of quantity over quality.
It depends on your age, but it’s a tough world out there. There are almost twice as many young single men as there are young women. Tango is a dance for two, so how does this happen? Simply put, younger women are dating older men because they are more likely to be serious.
The average age at first marriage is 28 for women and 30 for men. The age gap has been historically consistent since 1950, when the average age at first marriage for women was 20 and for men was 23. The difference is that there were far fewer lonely young men back then because women didn’t have to rely on older men. They still had time to marry men their own age.
As the age at which women first get married approaches 30, women who want to have children are pressed for time. They can’t afford to wait until someone their own age is ready, so there are more and more young single men. Women in their 40s are having to turn to men in their 50s because they’re dating women in their 30s. So it’s all about the younger men who can’t get married!
So, with all these challenges in mind, how can you get an edge in a dating game pool that’s rigged to fail you? Ace your numbers game and end up with an actual date, rather than just messaging.
A guy on a dating app tells you things you have in common. You both love dogs, you both like traveling, and you both like to chill with Netflix. After about 10 messages back and forth, he invites you out for drinks and you meet up. He’s a really nice guy, except for the fact that he has a cat. But these messages weren’t written by him, they were written by the AI-powered dating app.
Is the fact that he likes cats and not dogs a reason to give up on a relationship? No comment. But it worked! It was a great date. You met in person. And you two can keep using an AI-integrated dating app that suggests the best opening phrases for you.
The miracle of modern technology allows me to skip two hours a day of swiping and messaging. Instead, I can go on a date that the AI sets up, presumably after flirting and texting with it. If I can actually go on a date instead of messaging forever, that seems worth it to me.
Liberty Vittert is a professor of data science at Washington University in St. Louis and resident statistician at NewsNation, a sister company of The Hill.
