Swiping Right: What we’re learning from our work in the dating space
From the Library of Quick Study, April 2025
Hey. Hi. Hello. This is The Other 90, a blog about strategy from your friends at Quick Study. Today’s newsletter takes about 3 minutes to read.
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Let’s start here:
Dating (predominantly online), has become a consistently trending topic in our feeds. There’s the shuffling of CEOs, the IRL innovations, the viral stories acted out on TikTok like a best friends tea sesh. But if you look at who is represented in these conversations, it’s almost always young people. Like most categories, capturing the youth is the number one prize for brands, and dating is a ripe space for apps looking to do so. But by focusing on younger, newer entrants to the dating scene, most apps are missing out on a huge segment of the dating population.
Did you know that 19% of Americans over 40 consider themselves to be single? Another 20% are divorced, separated, or widowed. 7% say they are dating or in a relationship. In total, that’s about 46% of 40+ Americans who are potentially in a position to be dating, yet only 6% of them have used an online dating app in the last month (GlobalWebIndex). Even if you discount that a certain percentage of people over 40 don’t intend to date, that’s still a pretty low number, one that shows dating platforms aren’t doing a good job of meeting older daters where they are.
Instead of ignoring older, single Americans, Quick Study is currently deep in the weeds with them, doing foundational strategy work across the Spark Networks portfolio, which includes platforms like Elite Singles, JDate, Christian Mingle, and Silver Singles. Our work so far has revealed a generation of daters that want, and frankly deserve, better. They know what it was like to date before the internet and cell phones ruined spontaneous bar meetups. They see that online dating is becoming a more powerful solution for finding someone today. They hope that expressing themselves through their aspirations or non-negotiables (such as their religious preference) will help make things easier. But despite their willingness to try, dating apps haven’t met them halfway, and satisfaction from those 40+ when it comes to dating apps is lower than ever. Our hope is that our work will help older daters feel seen, heard, and respected. Who says only young people deserve to find a partner?
Following up on past Study Guides
We’ve spoken at length in this newsletter about how too much focus on trend cycles leads to pushback we call anti-curation. Here’s a recent rundown of how the trend forecast industry has overwhelmed consumers and created an environment ripe for the anti.
The future of the internet might be smaller communities, but that still doesn’t mean your brand should try to run one.
With so much uncertainty for consumers right now, it’s the perfect time to consider how much control your audience wants related to your brand, and what you can do to help meet them where they are and even take on some of their decision-making burden.
The Other 90 is written by Rob Engelsman, a former baby model and now Cofounder & Strategy Partner at Quick Study. To find out more about how we help brands and agencies get to smarter plans faster, email hello@quick.study. You can also find Quick Study on LinkedIn.