What does falling in love mean in 2019? For many, it means heading to an app and hoping you find true love with a swipe or a click, but there are concerns that online dating may not lead to true love and we are in danger of losing it. Comparethemarket.com have surveyed over 2,000 UK adults to see if love really is on the line or if online dating is simply the newest way to find true love. View the full results of the study here.
How Brits are Falling in Love in 2019
25-34-year-olds are the most optimistic about falling in love online with 34% responding “Yes, definitely” to the question “Do you think it’s possible to fall in love through an online dating site/app?”. Comparatively,
- 30% of 16-24-year-olds,
- 26% of 35-44-year-olds,
- 18% of 45-54-year-olds and
- 15% of the over 55s agreed
According to ru-brides.com People who use dating apps tied to shared interests, such as music, are the most likely to believe you can definitely fall in love online, with 69% answering the same question with “Yes, definitely”. The next most optimistic app users were;
- Dating services based on religion (65%)
- Meetic (68%)
- SpeedDate.com (64%)
- OkCupid (59%) and
- Grindr (57%)
Brighton natives are the most pessimistic about falling in love through online dating as 30% claim it’s ‘not possible’ to attempt naturally dating. Right behind them are;
- Norwich (28%)
- Leeds (28%) and
- Belfast (28%).
On the flip side, Southampton (28%), Newcastle (27%) and Glasgow (27%) are the most optimistic answering that you ‘can definitely’ fall in love online.
Over half of people that use online dating apps say they have fallen in love through one (56%), with 25-34-years-olds around 10% more likely to claim they have fallen in love through an app (65%). Those in the North East of the UK have been the luckiest in online love, with 69% reporting they have fallen in love with someone they met through online dating.
Newcastle and Belfast may be the best places to try Bumble – or any other dating app – with 67% of respondents from both cities having found love online. On the unlucky end of the scale, only 33% of Cardiff respondents say they’ve found real love online.
The Gamification of Dating
With dating apps having more and more game-like features, comparethemarket.com wanted to find out people’s opinions on how this affects the way they approach dating through apps. They discovered that only 7% of people say they often treat dating apps like a game and use strategies to ‘win’.
However, this changes depending on who and where you are; with the 25-34-year-olds, this increases to 11% but among the over 55’s it drops to just 2%. Living in Sheffield (13%) or Greater London (9%) means you’re more likely to treat app dating as a game, but it’s less likely if you live in Scotland (3%), particularly near Edinburgh (1%). Ashley Madison (42%) and Meetic (38%) users are most likely to claim to treat the app as a game.
The question of who treats dating apps like more of a game out of men and women gets slightly different responses depending if you ask men or women! However, they both agree that men are more likely to treat dating apps like a game, with 25% of women and 14% of men agreeing with this statement. Only 8% of men and 6% of women believe women are the most likely to treat online dating as a game.
It’s Not All Roses – Bad Experiences of Online Dating Revealed
- Almost three in five (59%) people say they’ve had a bad experience of online dating, this could be either while talking to someone on the app/website itself or when meeting them in real life, this breaks down as 56% of men and 61% of women.
- People who said they used Meetic (94%) most claimed to have had bad experiences either talking with, or meeting, people from the app, followed by Ashley Madison (91%), dating services based on religion (89%), SpeedDate.com (87%) and dating services based on interest (86%).
- People who said they used Zoosk (69%) most claimed to have NOT had bad experiences either talking with, or meeting, people from the app, followed by Bumble (68%), PlentyOfFish (64%), Match.com (62%) and Tinder (59%).
- The North East (75%), Greater London (69%) and the West Midlands (68%) are where people have had the most bad experiences either talking online or meeting up in real life, whereas Scotland (53%), Northern Ireland (50%) and the South West (50%) are most likely to claim they have NOT had bed online dating experiences.
- The most common bad experience with online dating is a boring first date, with 31% of people claiming to have experienced this. 21% of people have had to run away as the date was so bad, 17% felt that their date clearly fancied someone else. For 17% of respondents, the date ended when the person didn’t turn up or left early, and for 13% it was the classic ‘I spilled wine on my date’.
- Men are more likely to be stood up than women for a date made through online platforms with 20% claiming their date didn’t turn up or left early, compared to women’s 14%. Men are also a lot more likely to cause a short date with 17% admitting to spilling wine on their date compared to 10% of women.
