Couples who meet on dating apps are less happy in marriages: study
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Want to live app-ily ever after? Don’t meet your mate online.
While the unlucky in love are still hoping to strike romance gold — endlessly swiping for their forever person on dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, Grindr and Hinge — a new study has found that married couples who met online are less satisfied with their marriages than wedded partners who met in-person.
“The results provided evidence of an online dating effect … Online daters reported lower quality marriages than those who were introduced to their spouse offline,” read the September 2023 analysis conducted by researchers at Arizona State University.
For the findings, examiners surveyed 923 married adults in the U.S. over age 18. Approximately half of the study contributors had met their significant other on a dating site, while the remaining subjects met their spouses through friends, family, at work or in a nightclub.
Researchers sought to determine how the venue in which couples meet, either on an app or in a real-life scenario, impacts the satisfaction and stability of their marriages.
Participants were asked “How well does your spouse meet your needs?” and “How satisfied are you with your marriage?” to determine their overall marital satisfaction, as well as “Have you or your spouse ever seriously suggested the idea of divorce?” to indicate stability.
And the outcomes might be shocking to spirited swipers.
“Participants who met their spouse in online dating reported more societal marginalization than those who met offline,” wrote the researchers, who defined societal marginalization as how much American society rejects a specific type of romantic pairing.
While the scientists noted that online dating has become widely popular over the past decade — namely among Gen Zers and millennials between ages 18 and 29 — previous research has determined that people in the U.S. still place higher value on relationships that begin in-person rather than virtually.
In fact, in October 2022, NYC darlings Mike and Sidney Lee told The Post that they lied to their families, saying they’d met at a bar when their romance really began on Tinder — for fear of online dating stigmas.
According to the ASU study, the stress of societal marginalization often causes cyber sweethearts to experience less “network approval” — meaning support and acceptance from friends and family — than lovers who first linked in the flesh.
“Participants who met in online dating reported lower satisfaction and stability due, in part, to societal marginalization of their relationships,” wrote the authors, “which was associated with reductions in network approval relative to those who met offline.”
Without the blessings of loved ones, online honeys begin to lose hope in their holy matrimony.
“The support that couples do (or do not) receive from their social networks can have important repercussions for the quality of their relationships,” said the study. “Research has shown that the more friends and family approve of a person’s relationship, the more love, satisfaction and commitment they feel toward their partner.”
Researchers offered a few contributing factors to the dissatisfaction plaguing the marriages of digital daters.
“People who are married to someone they met via online dating are likely to be younger than those who met their spouse offline,” they wrote. Online dating also increases the size of the dating pool, which suggests that people who use these platforms may accumulate more dating experience than others prior to choosing a spouse.”
However, more dating experience may denote less discernment.
“It could also mean that people who date online become overwhelmed by their options,” penned the authors, “potentially leading to less satisfaction and poorer decisions in a spouse.”
Analysts also noted that swipe-right-sweeties tend to be in same-sex or interracial relationships — which, per the study, can worsen societal marginalization from the real world and cause each partner to feel less confident about their unions.
“Being in an interracial relationship also exacerbated the negative effect of meeting online on marriage,” read the report. “While online dating may be encouraging more racially diverse relationships, couples may still contend with prejudice and discrimination outside of these platforms that affect the quality of their marriage.”
Despite the eyebrow-raising results — which are eerily similar to those of a November 2021 poll, which found that married couples who met on dating apps have a higher chance of getting a divorce — ASU researchers insist that couples who meet online aren’t headed toward certain doom.
“On the contrary,” read the study. “[Average] levels of satisfaction and stability were still quite high regardless of how couples met.”
Researchers hope their findings inspire change, both in society and in the virtual courtship space.
“Online dating could be improved by addressing barriers encountered by couples who meet on these platforms (including increased distance and societal marginalization) and unique risk factors associated with how they met,” said the study.
“Second, platform developers could use the findings of this and other studies to set couples up for success by educating the public to help normalize online dating relationships or by providing users with opportunities to match with partners within their extended networks,” the authors continued, suggesting a function that permits daters to match with friends on social media.
“Third, [relationship] counselors should be aware of the obstacles that couples who meet online may face so they are able to help them more successfully navigate these relationships,” said the study.
“Addressing issues of marginalization may go a long way toward increasing support for these couples and ensuring a bright future for relationships formed via online dating.”
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