How Young is Too Young to Date?

[jooeika]

The “creepiness rule” states that the youngest you should date is “half your age plus seven.” The less commonly used corollary is that the oldest you should date is “subtract seven from your age and double it.”
According to this rule, society should accept a 50 year old man dating a 32 year old woman. A quick poll of my friends says otherwise. Reactions ranged from “sure” to “that’s weird” to “why are you asking me this?”. When I flipped the genders — a 50 year old woman dating a 32 year old man — people’s responses often flipped as well.
This made me wonder, does the creepiness rule actually reflect what is socially acceptable when it comes to age differences in dating? In other words, does the creepiness rule actually reflect what society finds…creepy?
What the Research Says

The internet is divided on the topic. Articles and blog posts alternate between claiming age absolutely matters in a relationship and age absolutely doesn’t matter in a relationship. One thing is clear — nothing brings out more opinions than other people’s love lives.
Buunk & colleagues wrote a paper investigating how factors such as age, gender, and type of romantic relationship (casual, serious, marriage, etc.) affect the age limits people place on potential romantic partners.
The researchers approached random people in public and asked them to imagine themselves in a romantic relationship with an attractive person of the opposite sex . The researchers then presented different types of relationships- sexual fantasies, casual affairs, long-term relationships, marriage — and asked the participants what the minimum and maximum age of their partner is for each scenario.

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[IMG]https://miro.medium.com/max/750/0*sLa52kbBT3iYrEh4.[/IMG]

Aside from the takeaway that you’re allowed to violate all social norms in the name of science, here were the actual results:

• Women want men around their own age regardless of the type of relationship. Based off a separate analysis using Buunk & colleague’s research, women looked for partners within the creepiness rule guidelines.
• Men want much younger women for less committed, more private relationships (e.g. sexual fantasies, casual affairs). For those types of relationships, men looked for women younger than the lower limits of the creepiness rule. For more committed and public relationships, men looked for women closer to their own age.
• Men and women have no interest in dating as old as the creepiness rule allows. Both men and women’s maximum age preferences fell well below the upper limits of the creepiness rule.

The results were interesting but just because I want to date someone much younger than me doesn’t mean I would be okay with someone else doing the same. I still didn’t know whether the creepiness rules actually represented what society finds acceptable.
So I decided to find the answers myself.
Setting up the Survey

I tackled this paradigm-shifting research the only way I knew how: I created a survey.
I presented people with hypothetical situations in which their friend, “John” or “Lauren” had started a new romantic relationship that was too early too define[1]. I then gave different ages for their friend — 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 — and asked participants what the socially acceptable minimum and maximum ages of their friend’s new lovers were.
Although I could have hit the streets of New York and surveyed people in-person Buunk style, I decided to mTurk my survey. I try to avoid as much social interaction in my daily life as possible.
For those of you unaware of the modern-day sweatshop that is mTurk (I say this endearingly), you’re missing out. Mechanical Turk is Amazon’s online platform where people pay other people to complete online tasks. This can vary from transcribing a movie, to identifying an item on a receipt, to taking a survey about hypothetical romantic relationships. Within a few days I got 274 responses: 110 male, 163 female, and one person that “preferred not to say”.
Testing the “Creepiness Rule”

The results showed that the creepiness rule is generally too lenient about how young you can date — especially as you get older.
Based on the creepiness rule, a 20-year old John/Lauren can date someone who is 17. This was in line with what people surveyed found acceptable (~18). As John and Lauren got older, however, the creepiness rule differed from how people actually responded. According to the rule, a 60 year-old woman is allowed to date 37 year-olds like nobody’s business. Yet according to the survey, 37 was well outside the age range of what is socially acceptable.

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[IMG]https://miro.medium.com/max/1000/0*sIy0O84ClWhCIyFj.[/IMG]

The results also showed that the creepiness rule is too restrictive about how old you can date when you are young, but becomes too lenient as you get older.
When John/Lauren are 20, the creepiness rules caps their maximum dating age at 26 ([20–7]*2). Yet, people surveyed were fine with John and Lauren seeing someone in their early 30's.
When John/Lauren are 30, the creepiness rule actually lines up with how people responded. The rule states that the maximum age of Lauren’s lover is 46 and according to the survey, the actual acceptable age is 45.4.
When John and Lauren are 60, the creepiness rule allows them to date anyone older than themselves (the official cap is 106). However, society places more restrictive age limits of 71 and 75 respectively.

[mewniiwks]

I do not think any rules can be applied here. It is too individual. The age difference can be huge and still people can be happy together. A happy relationship does not depend on your age, it is more complicated than that. But if you really want to meet a younger girl, you can first try communication on a dating site https://datehookup.dating/apps/hookup-danish/. Some online interaction will help you figure out what age is the best for you.

[Jamalun]

Do you want me to recommend you a cool senior dating review site that covers all information? It seems to me that it is very important for seniors to find a good sign site and tell about it! Agree? I want all the elderly people in the world to stop being lonely and unnecessary, I hope that it will be so!

[Blipt1954]

I do not think so that there is any age of dating as well as no age to find a perfect match that you can get dating a salvadoran woman on your fingertips which could be found at you near place which is totally adorable and reliable.