A man over 50 who wants casual dating online will find few active users his own age. Only 3% of Americans 50 and older had used a dating site or app in the past year when Pew Research Center surveyed them in 2022, although 17% had tried one at some point. Among adults under 50, the past-year figure was 15%. The ever-used share for the older group was about the same as when Pew last asked in 2019.
Online Dating Use After 50
Use falls with each decade. About 23% of adults in their 50s said they had ever tried online dating, compared with 14% of adults in their 60s and 12% of those 70 and older. Among partnered adults 50 and older, 6% said they had met their partner through online dating.
The platforms themselves split by age. Pew found that the services online daters use vary widely between people under 50 and people over 50, and that the differences continue inside the older group, with users in their 50s on a wider set of services than users in their 70s.
Stated Reasons for Online Dating After 50
Casual dating is a common goal among older users. About half of adults 50 and older who had dated online in the past year named meeting a long-term partner or spouse as a major reason. Some 36% named casual dating as a major reason, 30% named making friends, and 22% named casual sex. Younger users were equally likely to cite each of these reasons.
A man who wants casual dating after 50 therefore shares that goal with about a third of recent older users. He is also looking in a group where half of the people he meets may want something longer.
Payment and Satisfaction by Sex
Older men pay for online dating more often than older women. Among users, men 50 to 64 were 13 percentage points more likely than women the same age to have paid for a dating site or app. For users 65 and older, the gap was 22 points.
Men and women over 50 also rate the process differently. Across all ages, 53% of people who had used online dating described the process as somewhat or very positive and 46% as somewhat or very negative. Among users 50 and older, 57% of women called it negative, compared with 38% of men. Under 50, the gap nearly closed, at 48% of women and 43% of men.
Site Types by Relationship Goal
Dating services differ in who they attract and what their members want. Some general services have a mostly young membership, and some services limit membership to adults over 50. Niche services such as sugar baby websites are built around a single kind of relationship, and members join already knowing what the site is for. A man who wants something casual can put that in his profile, where other members see it before the first message.
Scam Exposure
About 47% of online daters 50 and older said they had come across someone they believed was trying to scam them. The figure was 52% for users 50 to 64 and 39% for users 65 and older. Among users under 50, men reported this more often than women, at 63% against 42%, but the gap between the sexes disappeared among older users.
In 2022, nearly 70,000 people reported losses to romance scams to the Federal Trade Commission, with total losses of $1.3 billion and a median loss of $4,400. Cryptocurrency and bank wires accounted for more than 60% of the money lost, and gift cards were the most frequently reported payment method, named by 24% of people who lost money. The FTC advises against sending cryptocurrency or gift card codes to a romantic contact met online.
Unwanted Contact
Some 45% of online daters 50 and older reported at least one of four unwanted behaviors on a dating platform. A third had received sexually explicit content they did not ask for, and 26% said someone kept contacting them after they said they were not interested. Smaller shares had been called an offensive name, at 17%, or threatened with physical harm, at 4%.
Half of users under 65 reported at least one of these behaviors, compared with 1 in 3 users 65 and older, and among users 65 and older there was no difference between men and women.
Sex and Intimacy in Later-Life Dating
A 2026 study led by Lauren Harris at the University of New Hampshire interviewed 100 single adults between 60 and 83 who were active on online dating platforms about romance and sexual intimacy. Of the participants, 97% said sex was important in a romantic relationship, and 72% said they would not pursue a relationship without sexual activity. Many described a relationship without sex as closer to a friendship. The study appeared in the Journal of Sex Research, and its central finding is that single adults in their 60s and 70s still prioritize passion when they date.
Participants also described adjusting to physical changes through medical treatment or by redefining what intimacy meant to them. The authors tied the findings to longer lifespans, which leave more adults single for long stretches after 60. A separate 2018 poll of adults between 65 and 80 found that 50% of men described themselves as extremely or very interested in sex, compared with 12% of women.
Sexual Health for Casual Daters
Sexually transmitted infections have risen sharply among older adults. Between 2012 and 2022, syphilis cases among Americans 55 and older rose seven-fold, gonorrhea cases rose nearly five-fold, and chlamydia cases more than tripled. Researchers point to longer sexual lives, helped by erectile dysfunction medication, and to low condom use among adults who grew up expecting a single lifelong partner and no longer worry about pregnancy. Age also brings biological changes, including weaker immune function, that make some infections easier to contract.
The 2018 National Poll on Healthy Aging, run by the University of Michigan with support from AARP, asked 1,002 adults between 65 and 80 about sex and relationships. Men were more likely than women to be sexually active, at 51% against 31%. If a sexual health problem came up, 62% said they would raise it with a health care provider, and 18% of the men had taken a drug or supplement meant to help their sex lives in the previous 2 years. Doctors often assume older patients are not sexually active, which is one reason experts give for the rise in infections.
Losses From Skipping Precautions
The FTC's advice to people who date online goes beyond refusing to send money. It suggests running a new match's profile photos through a reverse image search and telling a trusted friend about any online relationship. Testing for sexually transmitted infections before each new partner belongs on the same list. A man over 50 who skips these steps is dating casually with no check on either of the two losses this data measures, money and health.
