VERIFIED BRIEFINGUPDATED JUL 21, 20264 MIN READBY POOL REPORT RESEARCH DESK

Dating app demographics: who has actually used them?

Verified U.S. dating app demographics from a nationally representative Pew survey, with the denominator explained.

THE SHORT ANSWER

Online dating experience was most common among adults under 30 and LGB adults in Pew’s 2022 survey, while overall usage was similar across racial and ethnic groups.

53%: of adults under 30 had ever used online dating
51%: of LGB adults had ever used it
30%: of all U.S. adults had ever used it

Age is the clearest divide

More than half of adults under 30 reported ever using a dating site or app. The share fell to 37% among ages 30–49, 20% among ages 50–64, and 13% among adults 65 and older.

An age comparison should keep the same ‘ever used’ definition in every group. Mixing ever-use for one group with past-year use for another produces a misleading chart.

Orientation and community type matter

Pew found that 51% of lesbian, gay or bisexual adults had used online dating, including 24% in the prior year. The report also found more modest differences by community type, education and gender.

The survey did not measure every identity category in enough detail to support every possible comparison. Where the published table does not give a subgroup estimate, this page does not manufacture one.

Usage is not availability

A demographic group’s app-use rate does not reveal the number of compatible profiles within a user’s distance, age range, orientation, or activity window. It also does not show how many accounts are inactive.

Treat these figures as population-level adoption data. A local dating pool requires a different dataset and a clearly defined geography.

SOURCE RECEIPTS

Open the evidence.

These links go to the publisher—not a secondhand statistic roundup.

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Pew Research Center
From Looking for Love to Swiping the Field
Nationally representative survey of 6,034 U.S. adults, fielded July 5–17, 2022, with definitions and subgroup tables.
Open source ↗

COMMON FOLLOW-UPS

Are these numbers current dating-app user counts?

No. They are survey estimates from Pew’s July 2022 fieldwork, published in 2023. They measure reported experience among U.S. adults, not live platform accounts or monthly active users.

Which age group uses dating apps most?

Adults under 30 had the highest ever-use rate in Pew’s published age groups: 53%.

Are dating apps used only by single people?

No. An ever-used measure includes past use by people who may now be partnered, married, inactive, or no longer interested in dating.