Over 50 and Looking for Love?

If you’re part of the Baby Boomer generation and single, you’re not alone! What should you do? Get online! According to a recent CNN article, over 50 memberships to online dating sites have increased at least 350% since 2000! Users for one site alone now number more than 3 Million (22% of their total subscribers)! And while online dating after a certain age poses its own set of issues, even those boomers who aren’t finding mates, are finding dates – lots of them!

What’s causing this surge of more mature love seekers online? Well for starters, increased access to the Internet has created more familiarity with the online dating scene. Boomers have seen their kids’ generation succeed increasingly with internet dating – many interviewed had children who married people they met online. Add to this that dating sites are catering to older members, and it’s no wonder they’re the fastest growing segment of internet daters!

With the increasing number of older members, sites have begun offering a range of goodies just for the mature love seeker. Features range from an advice column for users over 50, to tips on everything from etiquette to sexual health. Representatives interviewed by CNN say these are particularly helpful to daters who may have been married for years before finding themselves single again. Their romantic radar may be a tad rusty, but these sections are there to help to loosen things up.

Make no mistake, however: a fifty-something is not any worse off than a twenty or thirty something online. And there’s nothing saying online dating stops at sixty either! Comedienne Joan Rivers recently told Howard Stern she has an online dating profile; so what’s stopping you?! After all, as one spokesperson told CNN, older users tend to be much clearer and more realistic about what they want: “There’s no substitute for the wisdom gained with age.”