The short answer: 37% have tried it, but 6% currently use it
SSRS used a national sample to ask whether adults had ever used a dating site or app. In January 2026, 37% said yes. This includes people who tried one app once, left after meeting a partner, stopped paying, or use several services now.
The same survey found that 6% of U.S. adults currently used online dating. This is closer to present use. It is not a count of daily active profiles, paying members, available singles, or people visible to one user. Keep the word 'ever' or 'currently' with the percentage.
The national adoption rate was stable across three SSRS surveys
SSRS reported past-use estimates of 37% in 2024, 39% in 2025, and 37% in 2026. Its current-use estimates were 7%, 7%, and 6%. Do not call these small changes a surge or collapse without a statistical test. The 2026 full-sample margin of error was plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. Estimates for smaller groups have more uncertainty.
National adult use looked broadly stable across these three survey snapshots. This does not mean the app market stood still. People can switch platforms, pause dating, enter relationships, or leave while the lifetime-use share changes little. Lifetime use records past experience. Current use describes a narrower time.
Usage varies substantially by age
In 2026, 51% of adults ages 18–29 and 53% of adults ages 30–49 said they had ever used online dating. The corresponding estimate for adults 50 and older was 20%. Current use was much lower in every group: 10% among ages 18–29, 8% among ages 30–49, and 2% among adults 50 and older.
The result corrects a common oversimplification. The youngest adults were not uniquely highest on lifetime adoption; adults 30–49 were statistically close and slightly higher in the point estimate. Younger adults were, however, more likely to report current use. Age groups also differ in relationship history, time exposed to apps, and platform preferences, so the percentages do not measure personal odds of getting a date.
LGBTQIA+ adults report higher adoption and current use
SSRS found that 63% of LGBTQIA+ adults had ever used online dating, compared with 34% of adults who did not identify as LGBTQIA+. Current use was 14% and 4%, respectively. These are national adult rates, not estimates of the number of compatible profiles in any city or of the experience of every identity grouped under the acronym.
Pew’s July 2022 survey found the same broad pattern using a different identity category: 51% of lesbian, gay, or bisexual adults had ever used online dating and 24% had used it in the prior year. Because SSRS and Pew used different labels, field dates, and recent-use questions, their percentages should be reported separately rather than spliced into a single trend line.
Tinder remains the most commonly tried measured platform
Among people who had ever used online dating, 48% told SSRS they had used Tinder. Plenty of Fish and Facebook Dating were each at 30%, Bumble at 27%, and Hinge and Match each at 21%. These are “ever used” shares within the online-dating-user population. They are not market share, current monthly users, paid subscribers, or exclusive preferences.
Platform use overlaps because one person surveyed can name several services. Adding the percentages would therefore be meaningless. The list is also limited to the services the questionnaire measured. Read it as past reach within a set list of services, not a complete count of the U.S. dating market.
Platform preference changes with age
Among people ages 18–29 who had used online dating, 74% had used Tinder, 49% Bumble, and 44% Hinge. Among people ages 30–49 who had used online dating, Tinder led at 46%, followed by Plenty of Fish at 38% and Facebook Dating at 33%. Among users 50 and older, Plenty of Fish was at 36%, Match at 33%, and Facebook Dating at 28%.
Each percentage is for people who had already used some form of online dating. It does not say that 74% of all Americans ages 18–29 use Tinder. Nor can it tell a reader which app has the best local pool today. It shows why a national platform ranking can be a poor guide for one age range.
Most former and current users name an exclusive partner as the main reason
SSRS asked people who had ever used online dating for their main reason. Fifty-eight percent selected finding an exclusive romantic partner, 20% selected casual fun or something interesting to do, and 8% selected casual sex. Smaller shares selected platonic friendship, self-esteem, a non-exclusive partner, cheating, or another reason.
This is an intention measure, not an outcome. Wanting an exclusive relationship does not establish that the person found one, and the categories force one “main” reason even when motivations overlap or change. Still, the result challenges the claim that online dating is primarily used for hookups: that was not the leading answer in this national survey.
Family values outrank matching on age or income
When people who had used online dating rated possible matching criteria, 51% said shared family values were very important. Political beliefs were very important to 33%, religious beliefs to 31%, shared hobbies and interests to 26%, and physical attraction to 25%. Education was at 20%, being the same age at 19%, and having the same income level at 9%.
These answers describe what people say matters. They do not show the weights used by an app’s algorithm or what predicts relationship quality. “Very important” also leaves out people who called a factor somewhat important. The simple comparison is this: family values led the list, while exact income similarity ranked last.
Relationship success depends on who is counted
Half of the people who had used online dating told SSRS in 2026 that they had at some point been in a committed relationship with someone they met through a dating site or app. This is a past result among people who had used online dating. It includes relationships that ended and does not specify marriage, duration, exclusivity today, or which platform led to the meeting.
Pew asked a different question in 2022: among adults currently married, cohabiting, or in a committed relationship, 10% said they had met that current partner on a dating site or app. Twenty percent of partnered adults under 30 and 24% of partnered lesbian, gay, or bisexual adults said the same. Both findings are useful; neither is a universal user-to-relationship conversion rate.
The public is more neutral than either boosters or critics imply
Among people who had used online dating, SSRS found that 33% considered online dating’s effect on dating and relationships mostly positive, 20% mostly negative, and 47% neither positive nor negative. Among all adults, 58% believed relationships that start online are just as successful as relationships that begin in person, while 37% said they are less successful and 5% said more successful.
Pew’s broader 2022 question also found a mostly neutral public: 59% of adults said dating sites and apps had neither a positive nor negative effect on dating and relationships. Different wordings produce different response distributions, so the surveys should support the same modest conclusion rather than be averaged.
Safety perceptions are divided and gendered
SSRS found that 57% of adults considered meeting someone from an online dating site or app generally safe, while 43% considered it generally unsafe. Only 5% chose “very safe.” Women were more likely than men to call it unsafe, 55% versus 30%. These are perceptions of meeting, not observed incident rates.
Pew documented experience-based risks in 2022. Forty-eight percent of people who had used online dating had experienced at least one of four measured unwanted behaviors, and 52% said they believed they had encountered a scammer. The latter does not mean 52% of accounts were scams. It records whether a person believed they had ever encountered at least one.
Why SSRS says 37% and Pew says 30%
Pew found 30% past use in July 2022; SSRS found 37% in January 2026. The later number may reflect real growth, but it also comes from a different panel selected by chance, different questions, different adjustments, and a different survey period. Without matching questions over time or a formal test, subtracting the two and declaring seven points of growth says more than the data support.
For current reporting, use the 2026 SSRS estimate and label it. Use Pew for its detailed experience, smaller-group, and current-partner questions. When building a trend, prefer repeated surveys from the same organization with the same wording, such as the stable 2024–2026 SSRS series, over a mix of unrelated polls.
How to cite these statistics without inflating them
A clear citation includes the percentage, the group counted, the question, survey date, and source. Write “6% of U.S. adults said they currently used a dating site or app in an SSRS survey conducted in January 2026,” not “6% of singles are on apps.” The survey did not use singles as its group, and “on apps” could imply a live account count.
National surveys cannot reveal a platform’s daily active users, gender ratio, local pool, fake-profile share, match-to-date conversion, or the number of people who satisfy a personal filter. Those questions require data from the platform or a study built for that purpose. The best public resource marks this boundary instead of filling it with an invented estimate.
What full group does each percentage or rate use?
| Measure | Estimate | Population counted and when |
|---|---|---|
| Ever used a dating site or app | 37% | All U.S. adults, SSRS January 2026 |
| Currently use a dating site or app | 6% | All U.S. adults, SSRS January 2026 |
| Ever used online dating | 51% | Adults ages 18–29, SSRS January 2026 |
| Ever used online dating | 53% | Adults ages 30–49, SSRS January 2026 |
| Ever used online dating | 63% | LGBTQIA+ adults, SSRS January 2026 |
| Have had a committed relationship with someone met online | 50% | People who have ever used online dating, SSRS January 2026 |
| Think online-started relationships are just as successful | 58% | All U.S. adults, SSRS January 2026 |
| Met current partner on a dating site or app | 10% | Partnered U.S. adults, Pew July 2022 |
| Rated their online-dating experience positively | 53% | People who have ever used online dating, Pew July 2022 |
| Experienced at least one measured unwanted behavior | 48% | People who have ever used online dating, Pew July 2022 |
What does “denominator” mean? The denominator is the whole group used to calculate a percentage or rate.
How to read it: SSRS and Pew used different field dates, samples, and questions. Estimates can be compared as separate survey snapshots, but a difference between them is not automatically a trend.
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