As Michael Rosenfeld and his colleagues have stressed, this means “disintermediating your friends” in dating (Rosenfeld et al., 2019). But the historical movement at work here is much broader. More than just circumventing family and friends, these platforms operate a sharp distinction between dating and all forms of sociability, turning the former into a specific social activity, with its own space and time. This is not a mere displacement of other meeting venues, it is a radical shift in the way we approach intimate relationships and organize social life.
This shift from public to private dating was first observed in the LGBT community. Gay and lesbian populations in the western world have seen a decline in community spaces, which earlier were important meeting venues, in favor of online encounters. In Europe the trend is particularly clear among gay men, for whom “the emergence of the internet coincides with lower attendance in spaces that combine sociability and meeting partners” (Velter, 2007, p. 82). This online migration has been harshly criticized by scholars such as Timothy James Dean, who sees it as a “troubling privatization” in which real-life face-to-face encounters have been replaced by solitary sex in front of a computer (Dean, 2009, p. 177). Others, such as Kane Race, have criticized this nostalgic viewpoint, stressing that gay hookup apps are “a significant source of pleasure, connection, eroticism and intimacy” (Race, 2015, p. 256). In any case, online dating participates in a general trend of individualization of homosexual experiences. As many scholars have pointed out, the greater acceptance of homosexuality has weakened the ties of community experience and has made some, often young lesbians and gays, distance themselves from what is sometimes called “the gay scene” (Adam, 1999; Rivière et al., 2015). Sex has become more private, as people meet more often outside collective community structures.
A similar transformation is now underway in the heterosexual population. With the expansion of online dating, the search for romantic and sexual partners is no longer within the bounds of ordinary life. The social surrounding is stripped not only of its matchmaking function but also of control over nascent relationships. This privatization of dating has two major implications: it plays a crucial, though often overlooked role in the success of online dating; and it creates an environment where external control is loosened. The present book will take a close look at these changes; in consequence it will tell a different story of how dating platforms have grown so big and what they are doing to intimacy.
Dating under the microscope
There is today an important body of scientific literature on online dating, although it seldom reaches the audience it deserves, as research is often published in academic journals that remain rather confidential. With some notable exceptions (Schmitz, 2016; Vaughan Curington et al., 2021), most books on the topic are written by journalists and essayists who draw very little on empirical observation. These books often start with an already given story: a hard-cut vision of online dating and its social impact. Although there can be references to scientific findings, and even some fieldwork, the empirical analysis is not as thorough as the theoretical framework may be. Proof is read into theory, and there is consequently very little room for contradicting facts, or even for scientific discovery and surprise. My starting point is different, as I draw on extensive empirical research. This leads me to other conclusions about the nature and novelty of online dating.
Empirical sources and methods
This book is based on research conducted between 2007 and 2020. The project started when dating websites were still a fairly new phenomenon; then it followed the emergence and diffusion of mobile apps later on. The depth of this historical layering helped me avoid overinterpretation and presentism. The empirical material comes mainly from three different sources, which articulate both a quantitative and a qualitative approach. Swedish historian Brita Planck, whose research theme is marriage in the Swedish aristocracy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, gives a good illustration of the importance of such mixed methods. If she were to use only statistical data, Plancks says, she would be tempted to say that marriage is no more than a matter of money and social status, as couples were strictly matched on these criteria at the time. However, if she were to rely solely on qualitative material such as the large body of letters analyzed in her research, she would conclude that, even 200 years ago, marriage was all about love and desire. By combining both types of source, she can show that love, as a feeling, is homogamous and strongly linked to class (Planck, 2014, 2018). Studying online dating requires more than ever a dual approach of this sort, as user narratives are full of feelings of excitement, distrust, enthusiasm, frustration, and deception and convey an image of online dating that is sometimes contradicted by statistical analysis, which reveals trends that users do not see (or do not want to see). For these reasons, I attempt to use systematically both qualitative and quantitative sources.
First, I use several large-scale scientific surveys in order to measure and characterize the use of online dating. Surveys on the topic are scarce and prompt me to focus on three countries where data are available and fairly recent: the United States, Germany, and France. The data come from questionnaire surveys, with representative population samples, on couple formation, sexual health, or digital technology (see Sources, pp. x–xi). Analyzing this type of macro data is essential for establishing usage rate, the characteristics of users, and the type of relationships formed online.
Alongside these traditional surveys, I also gathered “big data” from several online dating platforms. This was made possible by a scientific collaboration with the company Meetic Group, owner of several dating services such as DatingDirect, OurTime, French Meetic, Dutch Lexa, German LoveScout24 and Neu. Meetic Group is also the owner of the European activities of Match, which has a large user base in many countries. Access to anonymized and censured data from these seven international platforms permitted me to observe global trends in self-presentation and contact behavior. My analysis was carried out in strict observance of user privacy. This means that I was never able to identify users, track their usage, or access any of their communications. Only metadata were analyzed, as I did not have access to actual profiles or messages. But these data are precious for understanding how users of different backgrounds (age, gender, education, country, region, etc.) use the platforms and what groups interact with whom.
A qualitative study complements this quantitative approach and is based on interviews with 82 French users of dating sites and applications, aged between 18 and 68 years and coming from diverse social backgrounds. Almost all respondents identified as heterosexual; two identified as bisexual. I conducted the majority of the interviews myself; some were conducted by sociologist Rébecca Lévy-Guillain, who participated in the last stage of this project. All interviews were recorded, transcribed, and subjected to an in-depth analysis. The interviews had a biographical character in order to permit me to follow the trajectories of the interviewees. Thus I was able not only to situate the moments at which my respondents used online dating, but also to compare their online experiences with those that took place “offline,” in person. The following chapters present many excerpts from these interviews. Names and certain information have been changed in order to protect the anonymity of the interviewees. Readers should be warned that all my respondents lived in France, and experience can of course differ in other countries.
In addition to these interviews with users, I also conducted a series of interviews with founders of dating sites and apps, mainly French but also North American. These interviews aimed to help me understand how founders conceive of their own dating platforms and what visions of the industry they entertain. Because many of them were careful to protect the image of their company and I didn’t want them to censure their speech for fear of bad press, their names have been changed and the names of their platforms are not revealed.
Book outline
The book is divided into seven chapters, each focusing on a specific topic related to online dating and the transformation of heterosexual relationships. The first part of the book looks at the process of privatization, which is approached from different