AOL Finds Online Dating Generation Gap

A survey of users of AOL Personals find significant generational differences among online daters' views on truth and long-term commitment.

It doesn’t take a genius to imagine that the world of online dating can be a little wacky, but AOL and Zogby International took it upon themselves to poll AOL Personals users aged 20 to 69 to see what mattered to them in a relationship.

The results? Some 44 percent of survey respondents don’t believe marriage is necessarily to validate a long-term relationship…but that number climbs to 50 percent among respondents in their 20s. However, the generation gap swings the other way too: although almost half of all respondents said they would date someone not interested in a long-term relationship, those numbers go up among older adults.

Younger respondents were also more likely to place a high premium on trust in a relationship (85 percent of respondents in their 20s, compared to 79 percent of respondents in their 50s and 60s). But those same 20-somethings are more likely to trust a close friend’s opinion than their partner’s, and half of adults under age 40 said they would rifle through their partner’s possessions to see if he or she is hiding something. In comparison, just 25 percent of respondents in their 60s said they would toss their partner’s stuff.

Money also split the generations, with 85 percent of respondents in their 20s saying they would date someone who earns significantly less money than they do. However, older respondents are less likely to combine incomes in a romantic relationship, with 50 percent of respondents in their 20s and 30s saying they’d be open to the idea, compared to just 38 percent of respondents 40 and older.

AOL and Zogby haven’t released any details of their survey methodology (online, we assume, but how many people? Was participation random or opt-in? What were the questions anyway?) and, of course, the responses of AOL Personals’ users may not be generalizable to the larger U.S. population. (For instance, who knew people used AOL Personals? And that people over 40 were on the Internet? OK, OK, we’re joking….)

[Update 03-Jan-07: AOL says the poll was conducted online with over 6,400 U.S. adults between November 9 and 12, 2007, and has a margin of error of 1.2 percent.]