Fifteen years ago, there was always that guy who laughed in your face because you had found your partner online. Today that joker has a Tinder account where he is virtually ignored. Times and customs have changed. Meeting a potential partner today is a very different activity, and nothing proves it better than comparing historical data.
A team of researchers from the universities of Stanford and New Mexico presented a study with updated figures, and the result is clear: the places and people “in common” have lost much of their relevance in the search and selection process.
Finding a partner can be something sought, planned, organized and calculated down to the last detail, or it can arise completely by accident. It is a priority activity for many people out there, and a frustrating requirement for others (especially those with families trying to conjure up marriages every 20 minutes). Access to the Internet only expanded and accelerated the whole process, but it never hurts to wonder what happened to conventional methods.
A draft published by Reuben J. Thomas (University of New Mexico), Michael Rosenfeld and Sonia Hausen (both from Stanford University) explores these data. Their sources focus on heterosexual couples in the United States, but extend back to the 1940s, at the end of World War II. The dating system based on the mediation of friends and family has been considered “optimal” for many years. Family intervention was seen as promoting results that were “socially more acceptable” in the formation of young couples, offering guarantees (from trusted people) about a possible partner.
It is also necessary to highlight the value of common spaces, for example school, university, work, church, or the simple fact of being neighbors. However, the graph reveals that from the year 2000, all those classic avenues began to lose strength. People who met their partner through family were close to 30 percent in the 1940s, but that influence plummeted, settling below 7.5 percent. A similar drop is recorded among those who met their partners in primary/secondary school. Work was a good place to find love for more than 50 years, reaching its ceiling of 20 percent in the mid-nineties.
Once the Web came into action, conventional indicators were left with a downward trend. The only parameter that accompanies the growth of the Web in the search for partners is meeting in bars and restaurants. Both processes take 63 percent of the total, followed by contact through friends, at 20 percent. Do you think these numbers can be projected to the rest of the world? How did you meet your partner? Leave a comment!
Sources
Graph source: Derek Thompson on Twitter
Access the study: Click here
