4 things to know about online dating and Valentine’s Day

Facts and stats to get you through the fallout of Valentine’s Day 2016

1. It increases

As you would expect, online dating usage goes up during the week leading up to Valentine’s Day.

According to Time Magazine:

Considering that the site?s mascot is the symbol of Valentine?s Day, it shouldn?t be a surprise users celebrate accordingly. This week traditionally garners a 5% gain in the number of users who log in and an approximate 10% gain in messages. ?This is fairly significant as traffic does not normally change this much in such a short period,? CTO Mike Maxim tells TIME via email.

So January has Dating Sunday, the first Sunday in the new year, and February has Valentine’s Day to boost traffic to online dating sites and apps.

2. Number of scammers also increases

Scammers were involved in only 1.26 percent of online dating interactions on Valentine’s Day 2015, according to CNBC, but it’s still a day scammers have circled on their calendars.

Also according to CNBC:

“Dating sites are a real rich playground to mine data for other scams,” O’Hearn told CNBC, who added that pulling off the fraud often involves multiple people. One person is in charge of getting the personal information.

“They may be chatting with 20 people at the same time,” O’Hearn said.

The information gathered is then handed off to another member of the team to be monetized.

The article says that women over 40 are the most common victims, but you should be careful about the personal details you reveal, just in case.

3. It’s the female equivalent of the Super Bowl

According to eHarmony:

Why do I think the Super Bowl for men is like Valentine?s Day for women? Quite simply, both men and women put all of their emotional energies into these two bigger-than-life events. Often, a woman doesn?t understand why watching two teams trying to score is so important to her guy. He just can?t miss this game. Guys on the other hand, simply don?t understand that if you?re dating a woman and forget to plan something, just anything for Valentine?s Day, you probably won?t get a date with her on February 15th, or shortly thereafter.

It’s an interesting comparison. You may not understand why it’s such a big deal for women, but they don’t know why you care about some of the things you care about either.

4. Just like going to the gym

People get gym memberships at the beginning of the year only to see their time using it wane as the months go on. The same is true of online dating, according to iAcquire:

Online dating also sees spikes in January through March as people make New Year’s resolutions. On a week to week basis, traffic peaks on Sunday and falls off significantly on Wednesday.