National Singles Week Highlights Growing Popularity of Online Dating

PR NEWSWIRE — Sept 15 — 60,000+ people register on Match.com daily. National Singles Week is September 18-24.  According to recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau and other research: <1> We stay single longer; the estimated U.S. median ages at first marriage in 2004 for women and men are 25.8 and 27.4 respectively, an increase of 5 years for women and 4.2 years for men since 1970. There are more than three times as many never-married women and men ages 30 to 34 today as there were in 1970.  <2> The number of older single people is growing; There are 14.9 million unmarried and single Americans aged 65 and older. People aged 50 and older represent the fastest-growing segment of the Match.com community. According to Nielsen//NetRatings, more than 1.6 million men and women aged 65-plus visited online personals sites in April 2000.  <3> Being single doesn't necessarily mean being alone; there are 12.4 million single parents living with their children. Between 1970 and 2003 the number of single mothers increased from 3 million to 10 million; the number of single fathers increased from less than half a million to 2 million.

Mark Brooks: It would seem the institution of marriage is out of fashion. Is this because we have become a throw-away culture?  Are we just not willing to accept or work through a failing relationship?  Is this a bad thing?  We're living longer, women are more financially independent and the 'institution' is losing it's utility.  Should we drift through a series of relationships and forego marriage?  Perhaps we just need more help choosing the right partner…and help in early identification of incompatibilities and patterns of poor communication.  Online personals strive to help users make better matches by increasing the selection pool.  Sites such as eHarmony, TRUE, Perfectmatch and Tickle are focusing on guiding people to better relationship matches through personality profiling.