Who meets online? Personality traits and sociodemographic characteristics associated with online partnering in Germany

The Internet has partly displaced traditional offline meeting venues for partners. Here, we study whether meeting online is selective, i.e., whether there are differences in Big Five personality traits and sociodemographic background characteristics between those who meet online and offline. Using eight waves of the German Family Panel (pairfam), with observations from 7192 respondents from three birth cohorts (1991–93, 1981–83, and 1971–73) between 2008 and 2016, we found that meeting online is more likely for female respondents than males; for respondents from the older birth cohorts compared to the youngest one; for respondents with primary education compared to those who are currently enrolled and have no degree; for respondents who have shorter relationship durations; for those who have a higher number of previous partners; and for those who have less extroverted personalities. As we split the data by cohorts, it appears that meeting a partner online is slightly more selective for the oldest birth cohort than for the youngest one. Moreover, extraversion was consistently associated with meeting online in every birth cohort, and the association was negative in every case. These findings are discussed with reference to compensation and rich-get-richer hypotheses.