Around 1 in 4 married people in Japan under the age of 40 said they met their partners on a dating app, according to a recent survey on attitudes toward marriage by the children and families agency.
The nationwide questionnaire conducted online last month targeted 20,000 people (18,000 unmarried and 2,000 married) between the ages of 15 and 39, and showed that 25.1% of married respondents met their partner on a dating app, beating out those who met their partner through work or part time jobs (20.5%) and at school (9.9%).
Among unmarried respondents, 56.3% thought getting married was not important while 42.2% thought having a child was not necessarily important. However, around 60% of unmarried respondents still said they wanted to tie the knot someday, leaving only 20% saying they did not want to get married.
The lack of opportunities to meet people in-person was the biggest hurdle for marriage for both married and unmarried respondents, which may explain the rise in popularity of dating apps.
Indeed, almost 57% of married respondents said they have used a dating app before compared with only around 27% of unmarried respondents.
A different survey by the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry conducted earlier this year also found similar results, with almost 78.7% of singles between the ages of 18 and 34 saying they do eventually want to get married. About 42.7% of respondents said they view an absence of opportunities to find a potential partner as the biggest obstacle to marriage.
The survey¡¯s results show that the downtrend in marriages ¡ª with 3.9 marriages per 1,000 people in 2023 compared with 10.4 marriages per 1,000 people in 1972 ¡ª is not necessarily due to an aversion to tying the knot.
As such, the agency plans to move forward with discussions on setting up safe environments for people to use dating apps, as well as investing further in government-run match-making services.
The Tokyo metropolitan government is preparing to launch its own AI-powered dating app sometime this year in hopes of boosting its birth rate ¡ª the city has the lowest birth rate in the nation. Applications for on the app are open until Sept. 5.
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