Internet as a Meeting Place for Spouses: Homogamy, Assortative Mating and Online Dating in Contemporary Italy

This article studies the places where spouses met for first time in Italy. The focus is on online settings most recent marriage cohorts (2000-2009 and 2010-2016). aim to investigate trends over use of Internet as a meeting place explore whether dating can affect rules assortative mating homogamy. Information about marriages analyzed highly engaged relationships. A quantitative approach used bivariate multivariate analyses are conducted. data come from national representative survey "Family, social subjects life cycle" carried out by Italian National Institute Statistics (Istat) 2016 made available 2020. results allow preliminary quantification phenomenon document an increase Italy (from 0.4 percent who cohort 2000-2009 2.5 support idea that contexts show homogamy paths not different those characterize offline venues. Meeting partner doesn’t seem imply heterogamy.