This May Be the Most Depressing Statistic About Online Dating That You Will Ever Read

I was going to write about an article called, ‘I secretly date people who aren’t my boyfriend – but I don’t think it’s cheating.’ The level of self-delusion there is so epic that it’s hard to pass up, but the article also had what I thought was the mot depressing statistic about online dating that I’ve ever seen.

No, it’s not the fact that women only find roughly 20% of men attractive or the horrible numbers dating websites like Tinder put up for millennials, it’s this,

I’m definitely not the only one doing this: according to one recent, wide-ranging study by researchers in the Netherlands and USA, between 18% and 25% of the users swiping on one of the world’s most popular dating apps are actually in a committed relationship – a figure that jumps to 42% in the USA.

4.2 out of every 10 people on Tinder are “in a committed relationship?” Perhaps surprisingly, women are even worse than men on the dating app,

While several findings show that people can use Tinder to be unfaithful, this is not necessarily the case for everyone. In a representative Dutch study on sexuality, for instance, only half of men who were using dating apps while in a committed relationship actually reported sexual intercourse with another person met on a dating app. Surprisingly, this was not the case for women, as all women who were using dating apps while in a committed relationship reported engaging in extradyadic sexual intercourse.

When you start thinking about that many people browsing Tinder while they’re in a committed relationship, you start wondering how much being in a committed relationship really means in the first place to a big chunk of the population. Be careful out there because so many of “them hoes ain’t loyal.”