“Studies keep showing that love after 50 is more satisfying than at any other stage in life,” writes Francine Russo, author of (you guessed it) Love After 50. “Partnering is no longer about building family and fortune — it’s about sharing intimacy as grounded individuals.”

That’s the good news (if true). The bad news is that more than one-third of adults between 50 and 80 years old reported a sense of social isolation. This loosely correlates with the reality that 28 percent of Americans between 50 and 64 — along with 36 percent of those 65 and older, including 49 percent of women in that age group — live without partners.

Capitalism, typically good at responding to (and creating) needs, has taken note. Witness a bevy of online dating sites, including Silver Singles, Senior Match and OurTime that cater to this market. Online dating, which carried more than a whiff of stigma and desperation when Match.com appeared in 1993, has made its way into almost every demographic niche, with some 2,500 dating sites in America and 8,000 globally. 

Not only do twenty-somethings, who would seem to have endless other opportunities to meet significant others, find their soul mates (or at least their bed mates) online. Surveys have also found that one in four singles over 50 have used dating apps within the past year. Indeed, even before the pandemic, which spiked demand for matching services, the founder of eHarmony claimed that 80,000 of its users were over 80.

The online dating industry had revenues of $5.6 billion in 2021. Of course, this dollar figure excludes the economic multiplier of all the appurtenances of dating — dinners, drinks, flowers, grooming, clothing, gifts, travel and more. A 2019 poll found that dating costs an average of $168 per month — a number that is presumably higher among older, well-heeled adults who can afford Grey Goose and Delta One.

A combination of rising numbers of “silver splitters” (in contrast to an overall divorce rate that is edging down), longer life expectancy and generic Cialis have all contributed to the strong growth in digitally propelled dating in this age group. To be sure, dating at any age, with or without help from statistically derived algorithms, can be a joy, a nightmare and everything in between.

“Online dating is a mixed bag for most people,” Maggie Jones wrote in The New York Times of her experience with later-life romance. “Plenty of them do find love, including on their very first match. But many of us have to swim through a dispiriting sea of hundreds of people, most of whom we are unlikely to ever want to date.”

Yet swim they do. Some 36 percent of those 50 and older using online apps in the past year told the Pew Research Center that they wanted to date casually and another 22 percent were seeking casual sex — percentages not too different from the 18-to-49-year-old crowd. The only notable difference was that 30 percent of those 50 and older said they were seeking friends, half again as many as their younger counterparts.

Strikingly, older women are considerably less likely than older men to want to remarry: 15 percent versus 30 percent, according to a Match.com study. That said, wedding bells are hardly unheard of. Of the 2.1 million annual marriages in the country, a not-insignificant 10 percent of men and 7 percent of women who tie the knot are 55 or older.

Although Match.com and eHarmony are the most commonly used dating apps among those over 65, Bumble and OKCupid are popular among Americans in their 50s and early 60s — and one in five online daters in their 50s reported using Tinder. Among the three big sites specifically geared to older adults, Senior Match (which only accepts clients over 40) claims 1.6 million users over 50. It promises to “help you find whatever kind of connection you seek: torrid affairs, comfortable companionship or true love.”

OurTime, part of Match Group, which also owns Tinder, Match.com and OKCupid, claims to be “the largest community for singles over 50.” And Silver Singles, which has been around since 2002, says it is “designed to help 50+ singles look for a serious relationship,” although it incongruously notes that it accepts anyone over 18.

Actually, for premium prices — from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand — you can still substitute handholding by real people for computer algorithms. Old-fashioned matchmaking services like the Matchmaking Company cater to over-60 singles, offering “certified matchmakers,” dating coaches, background screening and personalized introductions. Or you can fly private with Selective Search, which charges a $25,000 “membership fee,” and claims an 87 percent success rate in matches. 

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The over-60 crowd, folks old enough to remember a time when coupling effectively depended on encounters through school, church, work, club, and family, represents a final frontier for online dating/matchmaking. But the frontier has certainly been breached and for good reasons. Aging is inherently isolating, as connections are dislocated by retirement, home downsizing, illness and declining incomes. And in an era in which we are almost daily confronting the downside of internet platforms, it’s nice to be reminded that technology — and capitalism — can still work wonders.