Whether you’re the romantic type that’s purchased the finest box of chocolates and roses money can buy or a singleton dreading February 14, Valentine’s Day is upon us once again, which means one thing—data analysis. Ok, maybe not but nevertheless with the surge of popular dating apps and sites, we’ve been given an interesting glimpse into how people use these online services in their quest for romance.
Online security firm AVG gathered together a ton of anonymized data from dating apps in 2014 along with population data from the United States Census Bureau to get a grasp of who’s swiping and where.
The infographic below shows the number of dating app downloads per 1,000 people in each state. Unsurprisingly, Tinder is the most popular app of them all but the study also included Plenty of Fish, OKCupid, Grindr, Match, Happn, and Hinge. Note though that the research only looked at Android apps so we know little of iOS lovebirds.
It found that Connecticut and Rhode Island are the states most eager for love, while New Mexico, Idaho, and Iowa come in at the bottom. Maybe most people there are happily shacked up?
“Connecticut is the place where you’re most likely to bump into someone with a dating app on their smartphone—one of the oldest states and the 15th most populous state. But our study also shows that size isn’t everything,” says Matt Strain, Director of Mobile Acquisition at AVG Technologies. “Neighbouring Rhode Island was ranked second—one of the smaller states in the Union, but apparently one of the hungriest for love.”
However while dating apps are pretty popular in the States, the global portion of AVG’s study finds that the US ranks only fourth. The UK tops the list for dating app usage with Australia and Canada coming in second and third.
It’s probably of little surprise that the use of dating apps springboards this week every year. Be warned though, a study from IBM earlier in the week also found that over 60 percent of dating apps have medium or high severity security vulnerabilities, so don’t let love blind your security posture either.