Who looks for new friends online? Age data from a sample of 196 Vairi members
Vairi Research. Published 23 September 2026. Updated 12 October 2026. Sample: 196 people, 18 November 2025 to 11 October 2026.
How old are the people who sign up to a friendship app? In a sample of 196 Vairi members who joined between November 2025 and October 2026, half were 30 or older, and nearly one in five was 40 or older.
Updated 12 October 2026: the sample grows from 152 to 196 people and now runs to 11 October. The median moved from 31 to 30, and the 40-and-over share from 24% to 19%, because recent sign-ups were younger (see below).
Key findings
- Median age at sign-up: 30.
- 73% (143 of 196) were 25 or older when they joined.
- 19% (37 of 196) were 40 or older, and 12% (23) were 45 or older.
- The largest single age band was 18-24, at 27%.
Age at sign-up
Vairi asks for a date of birth when someone joins, and you have to be 18 or over. Here is how the 196 members in the sample spread across age bands.
| Age at sign-up | People | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 18-24 | 53 | 27% |
| 25-29 | 41 | 21% |
| 30-34 | 37 | 19% |
| 35-39 | 28 | 14% |
| 40-44 | 14 | 7% |
| 45 and over | 23 | 12% |
No band dominates. 18-24 is the biggest at 27%, and each of the four bands between 18 and 39 holds between 14% and 27% of members. After 40 the numbers thin out without stopping: 37 people were 40 or older when they joined.
Recent sign-ups are younger
Of the 45 members in the sample who joined between 23 September and 11 October 2026, 19 were under 25 and none was 40 or older. Over the earlier months, 37 of 151 were 40 or older. Three weeks is a short window, and who signs up depends on where people heard about Vairi, so this says more about recent sign-ups than about adults in general.
Members over 40 come for different reasons
We also ask new members what brings them to Vairi. Under 40, more than half said they wanted to meet people in a new city. Among members aged 40 and over it was a quarter, and more of them picked ‘Unexpected encounters’. The over-40 group in that split is 24 people, so the size of the gap is uncertain. The full figures are in why adults look for new friends.
How we counted
- Sample: 196 members who created a Vairi account between 18 November 2025 and 11 October 2026 and gave a date of birth. Staff and test accounts are excluded, and each person is counted once.
- Age: worked out from the date of birth typed in at sign-up, which we do not verify. It means age on the day the person joined, not today.
- Data quality: 7 people gave 1 January as their birthday, which is sometimes a placeholder. Leaving them out does not change the median (still 30) or the 40-and-over share (still 19%).
- Limits: these are people who chose to try a friendship app, so the figures describe Vairi members and not adults in general. Location is not reliable for the earlier part of the sample, so the figures are not split by city.
- Privacy: every figure is a count across a group of at least 10 people. Nothing here is linked to a name or taken from anyone’s conversations.