"I do think mobile dating is going to be the main driver of this growth."The research, based on a survey of more than 19,000 individuals who married between 20, also found relationships that began online are slightly happier and less likely to split than those that started offline.
Digital technology and smartphones in particular have transformed many aspects of our society, including how people seek out and establish romantic relationships.
But the fear that online dating is changing us, collectively, that it's creating unhealthy habits and preferences that aren't in our best interests, is being driven more by paranoia than it is by actual facts.
"There are a lot of theories out there about how online dating is bad for us," Michael Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Stanford who has been conducting a long-running study of online dating, told me the other day.
On her screen, images of men appeared and then disappeared to the left and right, depending on the direction in which she wiped.
I felt a deep sense a rejection -- not personally, but on behalf of everyone at the bar.