Life
These Are The Best States For Online Daters, So You Can Plan Your Holiday Hookup Accordingly
Having trouble online dating is totally normal, but new data shows that where you live can have a big impact on your potential success. StartApp, an insight-driven mobile technology company, has a lot of data at its fingertips to analyze when it comes to online dating. In their new Global Dating Data Study, they looked at over 114 million dating app users — so we're talking a huge number of people. Then they took the data to find out the best place to be a dater. By looking at male to female ratios (which is definitely heteronormative, but useful for some), city usage, state usage, and other aspects of online dating, they found the best places to be a dater.
“We thought the state-by-state comparison of dating app density was interesting with eye-opening gaps states like Alaska where there is a three-to-one ratio of men to women," StartApp's Dana Endundo Ferreira tells Bustle. "But what was most interesting when we dug into the city-by-city level were results like San Francisco which has the highest proportion (42 percent) of all dating app users who also use travel apps (the average across America for dating app users is 11 percent). The city also takes the lead in dating app users who stay current on events with an impressive 39 percent of dating app users also having news apps — over three times higher than the average American dating app user." So by looking through the data you can find not only the best place to be a dater generally, but maybe even the best place to met someone with interests like you.
So if you're heading home for the holidays, here are the best states if you're looking to meet someone.
Nebraska
If we're going just be sheer numbers, Nebraska definitely gets a shoutout. They had the largest pool of dating app users, tied for first place with...
Maryland
Yup, Maryland and Nebraska may not seem like natural bedfellows, but they were tied for the greatest pool of daters.
Maine
I was happy to see New England get some love, and Maine actually had the most balanced female/male ratio of anywhere in the country. Obviously that's only important if you're hetero. In other parts of the country, men can outnumber women as much as 3:1. Sorry, Alaska.
Mississippi
Mississippi came in the number two spot for gender balance, so it gets a special mention. Although if you're not straight, having an imbalance may help, but sexual orientation wasn't specified in the study. "We looked at over 114 million app users for this study and every bit of data is anonymous so we can’t tell whether any of the people using apps are hetero or non-hetero," Ferreira says. "We wanted to put the focus on the app user not the apps they are using for this study, so we didn’t identify individual apps, many of which cater to both hetero and non-hetero users."
California
Besides San Francisco getting a shoutout from Ferreira for it's travel and news savvy daters, California had some other interesting specialities that made it an attractive dating location. Not only does California have the highest percentage of dating app users (12 percent), it also had about twice as many dating app users per capita than New York. So it looks like there is a clear East Side/West Side winner when it comes to dating options.
Texas
Houston has a higher density of dating app users than anywhere else in the country, which is enough to give the everything-is-bigger state a shoutout. And, at 11 percent, it was also the second highest percentage of dating app users country-wide.
As a lot of us head home for the holidays, it's natural to compare the dating scene in your home state or town to wherever you are now. But the data shows there are great dating opportunities all over the country.
