This year, Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld, who has studied the internet's effect on society for two decades, found that for American heterosexual couples, meeting online had surpassed other ways of meeting such as through friends or work.

An unprecedented 39 per cent of surveyed couples in 2017 met online compared with 22 per cent in 2009, representing a tipping point of sorts for how people meet and mate in the 21st Century.