Why Baby Boomers are turning to retro directories like AdultFriendFinder to skip the swiping games

If it wasn’t already obvious from politics and entertainment, the Baby Boomers, born between the years 1948 and 1964, aren’t ready to go quietly into retirement or give up the pursuits of youth. In fact, many of them are rekindling their romantic flames: a whopping 20 percent of them have tried dating apps, according to Pew research, and they spend just under 40 minutes a day testing their luck like the rest of us.

Don’t expect to find the Baby Boomers on Tinder, though. For long-term dating, the Boomers are more likely to use age-appropriate dating services like OurTime or SeniorMatch, or larger, more general-purpose dating sites like eharmony, according to Axios. 

But there’s an entire cohort of older daters who aren’t focused on the search for a long-term partner but still want to connect, and they’re increasingly doing so on retro dating directories like AdultFriendFinder. 

Here’s why these services are winning back the Boomers:

No swiping games

Senior citizens aren’t immune to swipe fatigue. In fact, according to research by Forbes Health, roughly 69 percent of Baby Boomers are experiencing app burnout, with the primary reason given being “inability to find a good partner.” 

But what happens when you ditch the swiping mechanic entirely? The AdultFriendFinder experience doesn’t rely on a matchmaking system, even though it does offer one as well. Instead, AdultFriendFinder creates organic communities in chat rooms, discussion boards, story comment sections, and webcam rooms, where you can initiate a conversation with someone who catches your eye or impresses you with their writing, or you can be the one attracting others.

For Boomers tired of endlessly swiping with minimal results, retro dating directories are a phenomenal alternative.

Large Boomer representation

Dating sites and apps typically cater to a younger crowd, for the obvious reason that younger people are more likely to be single, but that can make life tough for older daters looking to match with people in their age range or generation. 

Retro dating directories like AdultFriendFinder, which has been around since 1996, when the youngest Boomers were in their early 30s, have managed to retain or recapture a larger cohort of older singles, which means you’ll actually get results when you set your age filter to 55+, especially if you live in a city.

AdultFriendFinder has been tight-lipped about its exact user demographics, but my current Online Now page gives a good representation of what you can expect to find in a large metropolitan area in North America: out of 12 featured profiles, six are over the age of 40, four are over the age of 50 and two are over the age of 60. 

Bare naked honesty

One major gripe about dating apps, across all age groups, is how difficult it is to accurately assess other people’s intentions. In a landmark article from earlier this year titled “Dating Burnout: Why the Apps Exhausted Everyone,” the authors identified “evaluation labor” as a major causal factor. Does the person you’re talking to really like you? Do they really want “something serious” or are they secretly chasing something casual?

If you’ve spent any time on Hinge, Bumble, or any of the popular dating sites like eharmony or PlentyOfFish, you know that this kind of questioning is pretty much unavoidable in these contexts. People aren’t always fully honest about their intentions, or, even worse, they don’t always know what they want. 

But AdultFriendFinder is a major exception. On this platform, people feel free to be totally transparent, so much so that it’s entirely common to come across full frontal nudity in profile photos, or extensive lists of kinks and turn-ons. And for the generation that basically invented the Summer of Love and letting your freak flag fly, there’s a lot of appeal in this naked honesty. 

Paid memberships filter out unserious daters & bots

The free dating apps definitely have a lot to recommend them, but there’s a sneaky benefit to using a paid dating service like AdultFriendFinder: it’s easier to filter out fake accounts or unserious daters. 

Sure, it’s free to create an AFF account, but if you actually want to talk to people one-on-one, you need to upgrade to a paid subscription, and that extra step filters out a lot of half-committed daters or would-be scammers. And considering approximately one in six Boomers has fallen victim to an online romance scam, this built-in filter adds some serious peace of mind.

In the end, the Baby Boomers are just as susceptible to swipe fatigue as the rest of us, and they’re actively looking for a more community-based approach to online dating.