As Generation Z abandons online dating and millennials fight to recapture the golden days of social media, dating apps are helping older singles redefine the feeling of connection in the digital age. Much of the increase in older singles joining apps has to do with “de-stigmatizing dating later in life,” says Justin Garcia, a sex researcher and executive director of the Kinsey Institute at the University of California. Indiana. In just a few decades, North America has experienced “massive changes” in courtship patterns.
García says that one change in particular is the result of what he has called “reverse intergenerational transmission.” Where the flow of family or social customs is typically top-down, in the case of online dating it is bottom-up. “We have generational transmission of information and knowledge, but what we are seeing in appointments is the opposite. Children and grandchildren are putting their parents and grandparents on dating apps and helping them understand the new courtship rituals in today’s world.”
There was a moment when Wendy felt guilty for having her own desires. She was born in 1952. Everything was aimed at the gratification and pleasure of men. Then came the 1970s, a time of rebellion and independence. “We burned our bras and shouted for women’s liberation,” she says, “but inside, in many marriages and in many bedrooms, nothing had really changed. That’s very different now in a million ways. Now my sex is mine, it is no longer something that can be given to a man.”
Dating apps have become ground zero for older singles to explore expanding their sexual appetites, but they also serve as more than just a virtual meeting place. They have helped give older people new confidence. Wendy, who asked to be identified only by her first name for privacy reasons, was married for 40 years. She is now 72 years old, she lives in Hampshire, a county in the southeast of England, and began using dating apps after her divorce. “She was very depressed,” she says of the wound left by his separation from her. “A family member told me to get on Feeld as it had been great for her.”
Since then, online dating has given him a new perspective on life and a means to regain the control he lost. “It is no longer a ‘show’ of fake orgasms to keep the couple happy. It’s about waiting for something real, that is, sensually, not in the sense of “falling in love.” “I feel in love with myself and I have given myself permission,” she tells me. “I can’t describe what a radical change this is for me in terms of pretty much the rest of my life before Feeld. It sounds dramatic, but it is truly my experience.”
Although older singles are more open to love through dating apps, their success, in part, is because they are “more rigid, a little more sure of what they want and don’t want,” Garcia says. “For many, this is not their first rodeo. The compromises we can make in our relationships. [when we’re younger]“People 60 and older don’t feel the need to make those concessions.”