Half of ‘never-married’ Americans use dating apps, study finds

The next time you’re in a room of friends from the D.C. area who have never been married, look to your left and right — you may be surrounded by e-daters.

A new study from the Pew Research Center says that at least one out of two people is likely to be on a dating app.

Pew said that, of the thousands of participants in a 2022 study who were never wed, roughly 52% used a dating platform like Tinder, OkCupid or Bumble.



The study — which sampled people across the country, including those who identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual — also found that 59% of adults who were never-married and under 50 were using dating sites and apps. The number drops to 22% for those 50 and older.

Only 16% of all married adults in the U.S. said they were currently using dating services, Pew said.

This dating app survey comes after a recent survey that ranked the D.C. area as one of the loneliest in the world based on the number of people living alone.

It found 48.2% in D.C. lived alone and 46.5% in Alexandria, Virginia. Further sorting of the data found that over 21.5% of men living in D.C., and 20.3% of men in Alexandria lived by themselves; while 26.7% of the women in D.C. and 26.2% of women in Alexandria lived alone.

Ivy Lyons

Ivy Lyons is a digital journalist for WTOP.com. Since 2018, they have worked on Capitol Hill, at NBC News in Washington, and with WJLA in Washington.

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