Are You Ready for 'Dating Sunday'?

Each year, there is a single day when you'll likely find more singles on dating apps than any other day of the year. It's the first Sunday of the new year, which in 2025 will be January 5. In fact, there's a single time on that single day when the singles traffic is expected to hit a peak—specifically, 9:05 pm Eastern Time.

That's according to predictions from Match, which operates the largest portfolio of major online dating apps, including erome, Match.com, and Plenty of Fish. As a result, the first Sunday of each year has earned the moniker "Dating Sunday."

Match doesn't expect just an itty bitty bump in dating app participants on January 5. No, they're anticipating a 40% surge. This means that your go-to opening line of "I’m researching important dates in history; do you want to be mine?" could get a much larger audience on this date.

Of course, this isn't an exact science. The folks from Match made this forecast based on their traffic data from previous years. Setting your alarm for exactly 9:05 pm doesn't guarantee the peak won't occur at 9:03 pm, 9:07, or some other time that evening.

Nevertheless, there's no reason why the evening of January 5, 2025, shouldn't be like the evening of the first Sunday of previous years. "People get through the holiday season, get through its challenges and the stresses, and then get an opportunity to reset love, dating, and relationships, right after New Year's Day, right before the start of the week," explains Rachel DeAlto, a dating expert at Plenty of Fish. "On the first Sunday of the new year, people are thinking, 'What steps can I take now?' In many cases, it could be tied with New Year's resolutions."

If you spend January 5, which is also National Bird Day, looking at other types of wildlife besides those on dating apps, don't fret. There should be plenty of time to participate, as January 5 is just the start date of dating season, which runs right up to Valentine's Day. Dating Sunday is expected to commence a month-plus-long period of higher dating app usage with a forecasted average of over half a million messages exchanged each day. This would amount to a whole lot of "How you doing", "Love that profile", and "Where did you get that fish in your hand since I really want someone who can fish?"

The 'Dating Sunday' Surge

One source of the January 5 surge will be those already on dating apps but who may have turned their attention elsewhere toward the end of 2024, busy with year-end job and holiday stuff. Or theym ay have may taken a break from online dating.

A second source is the pool of the newly single from relationships that ended with the year. People often use the end of a year to reflect on where their lives are going. Then there are all the holiday dating trends, like Scrooging, whereby someone breaks up with you before the holidays to avoid paying for gifts and other holiday stuff, and sledging, whereby someone may stick out a relationship with you through the holidays before ending it soon thereafter.

A third source is the pool of people who have not used dating apps in a while, if ever. The end of another year as a single may tell them that their current methods of meeting others, such as sitting on their couches waiting, may not be working so well. The new year and the accompanying resolutions may have them up for trying something new.

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Credit: Psychology Today