Studies

In 2017, it’s impossible to imagine the hunt for a partner happening without your other beloved partner: your smartphone.

Those ever-present devices are our constant companions, with us from the moment we make a connection on a dating app, to the loved-up selfies we post on Instagram, to the shocking break-up texts we forward to our friends. Technology influences every aspect of modern love lives.

Match's seventh annual ‘Singles in America’ study took a look at exactly how tech and dating overlapped in 2016, revealing a few strategies for succeeding in love in 2017.

About Singles in America

Now in its seventh year, Match’s annual Singles in America study asks singles across the United States to share how it feels, what it looks like, and what it means to be single today. More than 5,500 singles were surveyed in 2016. Here’s what they had to say.

Gender and feminism are on everyone’s minds. The resurgence of the feminist movement isn’t just the subject of scholarly articles and fodder for celebrity interviews - it’s changing the dating landscape in 2017.

“The annual Singles in America study has once again demonstrated new emerging trends including men’s overwhelmingly positive view of feminism and feminists, in the boardroom and the bedroom,” says Dr. Helen Fisher, biological anthropologist and Chief Scientific Advisor to Match. “We’ve captured the great spring forward in gender equality.”

Match.com has released its seventh annual Singles in America study, the nation’s largest and most comprehensive annual survey of dating in the United States.

The 2017 survey is set to reveal surprising data and trends on new dating rituals, the impact of social media on the dating landscape, shifting gender roles, and attitudes about love, sex, and relationships across generations.

Unsurprisingly, Millennials were a major focus of the study. The much talked-about generation is “diligently using technology to find love,” says Dr. Helen Fisher, biological anthropologist and Chief Scientific Advisor to Match, “and building new dating rules and taboos along the way.”

It’s not your imagination: the longer a couple stays together, the more similar they become in both looks and actions.

“As human beings, we’re instinctively drawn to people who remind us of ourselves,” wrote Lizette Borreli for Medical Daily. The question is, why are we inclined to such a unique brand of narcissism?

“We are drawn to those we have the most in common with, and we tend to have the most successful long-term relationships with those we are most similar to,” Dr. Wyatt Fisher, a licensed psychologist, said in the same article.

It’s election season, and one thing is certain: there are different attitudes, habits, and priorities among people living in different regions of the United States. But it's not just about politics - some regional differences hold up in other parts of life, including dating habits and preferences.

Online dating service Badoo recently surveyed 1,000 of its users across different regions of the U.S. to compare and contrast their dating habits, taking into consideration age, gender and sexuality.

Some of the findings include:

It’s 2016 and we should be over stereotypes about single women, yet they persist like acne on a teenage face. When not getting shoutouts from Beyonce, many single ladies still feel pressure to settle down “before it’s too late.”

Single men, on the other hand, are celebrated. We idolize the charmingly rakish Barney Stinsons of the world, propping their lifestyles up as something to aspire to. There’s just one problem: those men may be more unhappy in their singlehood than their solo-flying female counterparts.

According to a new study from Avvo, an online legal service company, more women feel positive about being single than men. A sample of over 2000 U.S. adults aged 18 and over participated in Avvo’s 2016 Relationship, Marriage, and Divorce Survey. Three out of four female participants said they’d rather be “alone, successful, and happy” than be in a disappointing relationship. Only 58% of male participants said they felt the same way.