Online dating at

Online dating can feel overwhelming. The sheer number of apps and users can make simply swiping seem like a daunting task. In fact, the online dating audience is expected to grow from And by , eHarmony predicts that 70 percent of couples will have met online.

Algorithms, and not friends and family, are now the go-to matchmaker for people looking for love, Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld has found. In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , Rosenfeld found that heterosexual couples are more likely to meet a romantic partner online than through personal contacts and connections. Since , traditional ways of meeting partners—through family, in church and in the neighborhood—have all been in decline, Rosenfeld said. Rosenfeld, a lead author on the research and a professor of sociology in the School of Humanities and Sciences, drew on a nationally representative survey of American adults and found that about 39 percent of heterosexual couples reported meeting their partner online, compared to 22 percent in

My wife and I met as freshmen in a small college astronomy class in the spring of At the time, it was rare to find a romantic partner online: state-of-the-art communication tools, such as AOL Instant Messenger, were mainly used to talk to people you already knew. Source: Rosenfield, Michael J.

Online dating or Internet dating is a system that enables people to find and introduce themselves to new personal connections over the Internet , usually with the goal of developing personal, romantic, or sexual relationships. An online dating service is a company that provides specific mechanisms generally websites or applications for online dating through the use of Internet-connected personal computers or mobile devices. Such companies offer a wide variety of unmoderated matchmaking services, most of which are profile-based. Online dating services allow users to become "members" by creating a profile and uploading personal information including but not limited to age, gender, sexual orientation, location, and appearance.