ABSTRACT
How do people meet people to date? A sociologist conducted a national survey to see how people met their partners and how these practices have shifted over time. Over the past 60 years, family members have been steadily less involved in helping people fi nd a spouse. Friends, in comparison, seem to have replaced family, becoming increasingly more important up until the 1990s. But more recently, friends are playing a less central role. Since the 1990s, meeting a partner online is becoming more and more common, appearing to replace the matchmaking of friends. Today, among opposite-sex couples, fi nding a partner online is almost as likely as meeting through a friend. Among same-sex couples, online is now the most common way to meet a partner. 1 For solid advice on how to better maneuver this emerging online world of dating, we recommend the book Modern Romance.
