Data
The north metro Atlanta dating survey: what local singles told us
By Matthew Firth, founder of NexSpark · Sep 9, 2026 · 4 min read
We've been running short polls on NexSpark's own Nextdoor page for the neighborhoods around Buford, north of Atlanta, and the answers keep surprising us. This is the first write-up of that data: two real questions, asked to real local Nextdoor neighbors, with real (small) sample sizes disclosed up front. Nobody else has this specific data, because nobody else asked these specific neighbors these specific questions.
A quick note on geography before anything else: our audience here is the north metro area around Buford, not intown Atlanta. We say "around here," not "Atlanta," on purpose. If you want the national picture instead, our how-do-most-couples-meet piece covers the Stanford research on that.
How people say they actually met
On 9 Aug 2026 we asked our neighbors a version of the oldest dating question there is: where did you actually meet your partner? Twenty-nine people answered. The results didn't match the apps-first story dating culture usually tells.
said they met their partner at work, the single most common answer in our poll.
NexSpark Nextdoor poll, 9 Aug 2026, n=29
said a dating app, tied for the least common answer among the choices offered.
NexSpark Nextdoor poll, 9 Aug 2026, n=29
Twenty-nine people is not a statistically representative sample of anything, and we say so plainly in the methodology below. But it's a real, dated answer from real neighbors, not a national stat recycled from somewhere else, and it lines up with a pattern we keep seeing as these polls continue: the people who answer them don't talk about dating apps like the apps are where dating actually happens anymore.
The dating app fatigue is real, at least around here
So we asked directly. On 31 Aug 2026 the question was blunt: "Be honest, how many dating apps do you currently have installed, even if you're not really using them?" Forty-three people answered.
said zero. Not "just one," not "a couple I forgot about." Zero apps installed, full stop.
NexSpark Nextdoor poll, 31 Aug 2026, n=43
That's a striking number for a dating app company to publish about its own local market, and we're publishing it anyway, because it matches what the "met at work" answer above already suggested. Around here, at least among the neighbors who stopped to answer a poll, the apps aren't the default anymore. They're one option among several, and for most of the people we asked, not even the one they're currently using.
What this means, and what it doesn't
It doesn't mean dating apps are dead nationally. It doesn't mean 79% of singles everywhere have deleted their apps. It means that in one specific, disclosed, small sample of one specific suburb north of Atlanta, on two specific dates, that's what people said. We think that's still worth publishing, because so little local dating data exists at all that even a small, honest sample beats the alternative, which is no data and a lot of confident-sounding guessing.
It's also the reason NexSpark exists in the first place: if the apps aren't where most people are actually meeting each other anymore, the answer isn't a better app. It's a real matchmaker who does the work the apps were never built to do.
Methodology & limitations
- This is Nextdoor poll data from NexSpark's own Business Page, not NexSpark member data. Nobody who answered these polls has to be a NexSpark user, and we don't use our own platform's member data for this kind of claim. It's too small a base to say anything statistically meaningful, and we'd rather publish honest public poll numbers than dress up our own user base as a market study.
- Sample sizes are small and disclosed per figure. 29 respondents for the "how did you meet" question, 43 for the "how many apps" question. These are single polls, not a running tracker, and we're not rounding either number up into a bigger claim than it supports.
- Geography is the north metro area around Buford, Georgia, not intown Atlanta. NexSpark's registered business address puts our Nextdoor reach roughly 35 miles north of the city. We keep the "around here" framing instead of calling this an "Atlanta" survey, because it isn't one.
- Nextdoor's poll format is single-choice with a fixed set of answers we wrote ourselves, not an open-ended survey. Respondents pick from options we set, which shapes what an answer like "14% said a dating app" can and can't tell us.
- Respondents are self-selected. They're the neighbors who happened to see the poll and chose to answer it, not a randomly sampled or demographically balanced group.
- This is the first installment of an ongoing series. We run a new poll on this page roughly every few days and plan to update this page as more data accumulates, rather than treat two polls as a finished picture.
Sources
- NexSpark, Nextdoor poll on "where did you meet your partner," dating page, 9 Aug 2026 (n=29).
- NexSpark, Nextdoor poll on current dating-app usage, dating page, 31 Aug 2026 (n=43).
- NexSpark's Nextdoor Business Page: nextdoor.com/page/nexspark-buford-ga.
Figures are rounded to the nearest percent as reported by Nextdoor. Journalists and writers are welcome to cite this page, just link back so readers can find the source polls too.
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