The 2012 Singles In America Report

For the last three years, Match.com has compiled an annual review of singles' dating habits, sexual practices, and lifestyles. The 'Singles in America' study is the largest and most comprehensive of its kind, thanks to Match's massive user base. As the biggest online dating site in the world, Match has unprecedented access to info on the 1/3 of the U.S. population that is single.

The 2012 report debuts the inclusion of married individuals in the study, in order to gain a greater understanding of sex and love and to compare lifestyles and attitudes across a range of relationship statuses.

Highlights of the study include:

• Friends with benefits is increasingly becoming a standard stop on the way to a relationship. 47% of singles have had a friends with benefits arrangement in the past (40% of women and 53% of men), with a dramatic year-over-year increase. And not only are they happening more frequently, they're also turning into serious relationships more than ever before.
• But, although casual sex is on the rise, a greater number of American women are insisting on some kind of commitment before getting intimate with a new partner. Women are looking to wait until they're in an exclusive relationship before jumping into bed with someone (25% of single women in 2010, 31% in 2011, and 37% in 2012)
• The struggling economy has been big news almost everywhere, but Americans' dating lives have remained largely untouched by the financial crisis. Nearly 2/3 of singles say they have not changed their dating habits during the last three years.
• In news that will surprise very few of you, bars are out and the Web is in. Online dating sites are now the #1 place where singles meet, with almost 1/3 reporting that they dated someone they met online. 20% of singles say they met their most recent first date online, while only 7% say they met their newest date in a bar.

"As the leader in the online dating industry for almost two decades," said Mandy Ginsberg, CEO of Match.com, "gaining an even deeper knowledge of our audience - an incredibly influential segment of society - is invaluable to our business."

"Since its inception, Singles in America has proven to be an unprecedented source of insight into the ideologies and lifestyle choices of today's singles. Now in our third year with the study, we are identifying trends and compelling findings on everything from the prevalence of technology in the dating process to singles' sentiments about married life, as well as previously unstudied trend data."

Stay tuned for more on the study as new information is released. If you are interested in finding out more about this dating site which is extremely popular in the United States, you can take a look at our Match.com review.