11 Results from Studies About Online Dating

A study of 4000 people claims couples who meet on dating sites are less likely to get married and more likely to break up than couples who met offline. The phenomenon holds true for both married and unmarried couples.

30 present of women consult with friends on their profiles. Only 16 percent of men do. This accounts for a total of 22 percent of people with online dating profiles who ask a friend to help them create or review their profile.

Women who don't drink get 24 percent fewer messages than those who do.

Research claims that women are more likely to get messages if they are Catholic, have a dog, earn more than $25, 000, and don’t have a master's degree. Men get more messages if they are Christian, brunette, high-earners, and PhDs.

... never go on dates with those they meet online. This surprising statistic comes from a survey conducted in late 2013 and is actually an improvement from a similar research conducted in 2005, where the number was over half.

A group of U.S. psychology professors collaborated on a report, describing the faults of online dating, which was published in 2012. The dating sites wouldn't share their specific algorithms with the researchers, but the professors stated that the sites couldn't predict whether a relationship would last just because two people had similar interests and personalities.

Profiles perceived from being of a middle-class person are more sought after than the ones perceived as being from lower-class. People prefer a potential partner to be of mixed or ambiguous race instead of a blatantly different race than their own.

Men spend half the time women spend on reading profiles. Researchers use eye-tracking to determine where men and women are actually looking while reading online dating profiles. 

Men spend 65 percent more time looking at the pictures in the profile than women do.

... are more likely to find love. Researchers analyzed word choices on millions of dating profiles to reach this conclusion. The same research also found that men benefited from using the words “heart, ” “children, ” “romantic, ” and “relationship. ”

Most lie about height, weight and age. 

Women and men tend to claim that they are, respectively, 8. 5 and 6. 5 pounds lighter than their actual weight. Men round up their height by a half-inch more often. People lie the least when it came to age.