Thread by @datepsych

Forgot I had this and I haven't seen many people talk about it - this is data from the Match/Kinsey Institute 2022 sample of singles. Data on who goes on dates and relationships.

Here are some charts from this dataset I made. 🧵

Important going into this thread - these are singles, so not the ~70% of Americans in relationships. Also, this sample is 59.1% female and 39.8% male. Data is from the codebook and I don't have a gender breakdown yet.

First, most singles report not wanting and not actively seeking a relationship.

This is consistent with the recent Pew data as well (second image). Many singles simply are not looking.

Most singles report having been in a romantic relationship 0 to 1 times in the past year. This distribution is also consistent with GSS data on sexual behavior (second and third images).

This is how many dates singles went on in the last year. About half went on none. Note these may be dates with the same person - second, third dates, etc.

And here are how many unique first dates singles went on, or dates with different people. "No response" here probably reflects the 0 dates responses in the past chart.

Aside from that - extremely few singles going on multiple dates with new people.

Here is how people met their dates - mostly offline. Dating apps and social media together accounted for 25% of dates. Top response (cut off in the resized chart) is "though a friend."

How many dating sites have singles been on in the last year? For 62% - none at all.

Here are some questions that looked at how dating attitudes have changed.

Singles are less willing to meet someone quickly online.

Singles are also less eager to meet a partner at all.

Again consistent with the recent Pew data.

Half of singles feel enthusiastic about dating - the other half either don't or feel neutral.

What is the ideal sexual relationship? For most singles, sex in a monogamous relationship. Meanwhile 20% report wanting no sexual relationship at all.

And here is how many romantic relationships singles had in the last year. Similar trend with dates and sexual behavior. Most people between 0-1. Most singles remaining single or exiting a relationship.

Very few going through multiple relationships in a short period of time.

Here is my analysis of this and how it relates to all of the other large datasets we have on sex and relationships. Important - because the trends we see here converge across all of these as well.

There are people pushing "promiscuity narratives" - the claim that everyone (or in particular most women) are having wild and unrestricted sex. For example:

This is not supported by any of the data out there. It is entirely made up.

What we see instead is that most people who are not in monogamous relationships are seeking monogamy.

Further, a large number of singles - about half of men and women - have dropped out of dating all together.

A promiscuous cohort remains: the so-called "promiscuous 10%." A distribution of men and women with high sexual partner counts who are mostly sleeping with each other.

These are the ones who report wanting casual sex.

This is reflected not only in all of the self-report data on relationships and sexual behavior, but also in non-report measures.

For example, sexually transmitted disease rates. These are the ones with high rates of transmission.

The effect of online dating has also been overstated.

As we see, most people do not meet their dates on apps. About half never use apps. True in this dataset and in the recent Pew 2022 data (excepts from that here).

Further, the rollout of Tinder did not predict more self-reported sexual behavior, nor an increase in STD transmission. Here again we see reports and non-report data converge.

Memes like the "80/20 rule" derived from Tinder swipe behavior - the observation that most male profiles don't get much attention - have never shown that 20% of men are having sex with 80% of the women.

It never measured that.

Further, given that half of singles are not on apps, and app use ratio is 3 men for every 1 woman, if every female app user paired off with one man, 66% of male app users would be left with no dates.

Most women aren't on apps and there are not enough women for male app users.

The point - apps aren't why you are single. They aren't responsible for the birth rate crisis and they aren't associated with an uptick in promiscuity.

Most singles are living lives without any sexual activity at all.

Most people are not having regular casual sex.

Perhaps more worrisome than the fiction of "I can't mate because Chad stole my girlfriend" is how many young men and women seem to have dropped entirely out of dating.

Not forming relationships, not seeking relationships, not having sex.

We have to ask in that case how much of the mating crisis is self-inflicted. Like Calhoun's rats in the behavioral sink: a loss of the motivation, ability, or desire to form relationships and have sex at all.