Search “ghosting statistics” and you’ll get a wall of numbers that all seem to know each other. Eighty percent of millennials. Half of everyone. An epidemic. Follow any of them back to a parent and you land on a dating company’s press release or a blog citing a blog citing a blog. So this is the other list: every ghosting number we could trace to a primary source, what each one actually measured, why they disagree with each other, and at the bottom, the famous ones we refused to repeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Standard note for this series: nothing here is LFGdating data. Public polls and peer-reviewed research only, each linked where the number appears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The best general-population snapshot is YouGov’s October 2021 survey of 7,180 US adults: 19% had been ghosted by someone they dated, 25% by a friend, 12% by a family member, and 46% had never been ghosted by anyone<\/a>. On the other side, 17% had ghosted someone they dated, 19% a friend, 10% a family member, and 57% had never ghosted anyone<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two earlier YouGov snapshots exist, and they are not a trend line, because the questions changed. In October 2014, when the word was new, 13% of 1,000 US adults said they’d been ghosted by someone they were dating and 11% said they’d done it<\/a>; the same poll found 62% thought breaking up by text was not at all appropriate<\/a>. In January 2019, asked about partners or<\/em> friends in a single question, 30% of 1,782 adults said they had ever ghosted someone<\/a>. Different wording, different denominators. Anyone drawing an “up and to the right” line through those three points is drawing it freehand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The peer-reviewed US samples cluster with YouGov. In the first academic study of ghosting, 25.3% of 554 adults had been ghosted by a romantic partner and 21.7% had ghosted one; in a second sample of 747, it was 23.0% and 18.9%<\/a>. Friendships ran higher: 38.6% ghosted by a friend, 31.7% had ghosted a friend<\/a>. A follow-up program across three samples found 28.5%, 47.0% and 37.3% had been ghosted by a partner, and 38.2%, 38.9% and 26.1% had ghosted one<\/a>; in the largest of those samples (863 adults), 54% had no ghosting experience of either kind<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Outside the US, a Spanish survey of 626 adults aged 18 to 40 found 19.3% had been ghosted and 23.2% had ghosted someone in the previous twelve months, with 2.9% ghosted more than five times in a year; 63.6% had never heard the word<\/a> before the survey defined it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then there’s the room where it happens most. Among 328 Dutch mobile-dating app users, 85% had been ghosted and 63% had ghosted<\/a>. In a US sample of 99 emerging adults who were already familiar with the term, 29.3% had only ghosted, 25.3% had only been ghosted, and 44.2% had done both<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why the range runs from 13%<\/a> to 85%<\/a>: the samples differ (a national panel versus people who use dating apps), the recall windows differ (ever versus the past year), and the definitions differ (breaking up with a partner versus cutting off anyone). None of the numbers is wrong. Each one answers a different question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n People think ghosting is more common than it is. When 863 US adults were asked to estimate what share of adults had ghosted a romantic partner, the average guess was 39.4%, and the average guess for having been ghosted was 39.5%; in that same sample, 26.1% had actually ghosted a partner and 37.3% had been ghosted<\/a>. People with their own ghosting history guessed higher than people without one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The same study measured approval. Asked how much “the average individual is supportive of others ghosting a romantic partner,” responses averaged 3.21 on a 1-to-7 scale, below the midpoint; asked whether the average person feels embarrassed when ghosted, responses averaged 5.68<\/a>. A thing everyone assumes everyone does, and nobody thinks is fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Very context-dependent, and mostly not. In the 554-adult study, 19.5% said ghosting was acceptable to end a short-term relationship, 4.7% a long-term one, 28.2% after only one date, 20.6% before physical intimacy, and 6.5% after it; 69.1% said they’d think poorly of a ghoster, and 9.2% said they’d consider doing it<\/a>. Among the 99 emerging adults in the qualitative study, 74% called ghosting an inappropriate way to end a relationship<\/a>. The gap between “I’d consider it” (9.2%) and “I’ve done it” (21.7%)<\/a> in the same sample is the size of the guilt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Belief in destiny. In two US studies, stronger belief that relationships are either meant to be or not raised the odds of having ghosted a partner by 31.8% in the first study and 37.2% in the second<\/a>, and destiny believers rated ghosting as more acceptable and were more likely to intend to use it. In a third program, people who had ghosted a partner scored 4.27 on destiny beliefs versus 3.75 for people with no ghosting history<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Age, a little. In the Dutch app study, each year younger raised the odds of having ghosted by a factor of 1.08<\/a>. That’s the entire generational finding in the literature; no study we read produces a “Gen Z ghosts most” number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n App use, in two directions. The same Dutch study found less frequent dating-app use was associated with higher odds of having ghosted<\/a>, while the Spanish study found more time on dating sites and apps, and more short-term relationships, were associated with both suffering and initiating ghosting<\/a>. Two samples, two countries, two answers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gender: no difference found. The Spanish team reported no significant differences in ghosting by gender, sexual orientation, age or relationship status<\/a>, and the US studies didn’t test it. Attachment style: ghosters scored higher on avoidance in two of three samples but the pooled effect wasn’t significant<\/a>. The “avoidant people ghost” headline is thinner than it sounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The one head-to-head experiment. In Milan, 176 adults were randomly assigned to recall being ghosted, orbited or explicitly rejected in the past five years. Ghosted participants reported stronger feelings of exclusion (4.63 vs. 3.61 on a 7-point scale), more threat to belonging (4.62 vs. 4.03) and to control (4.70 vs. 3.99), and rated the ending as less expected (2.90 vs. 3.95) and less fair (2.68 vs. 3.68) than rejected participants<\/a>. Sadness, anger, pain, anxiety, guilt and shame did not differ, and neither did self-esteem or meaningful existence. The four needs in that design come from decades of ostracism research showing that being ignored threatens belonging, self-esteem, control and meaningful existence<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The emotional signature. Among 80 people who had both ghosted and been ghosted, being ghosted rated higher on sadness (3.78 vs. 2.76 on a 5-point scale), loneliness (3.53 vs. 2.56) and anger (3.01 vs. 2.49) than ghosting someone; ghosting rated higher on guilt (3.29 vs. 2.35)<\/a>, and ghostee accounts were more likely to mention hurt while ghoster accounts were more likely to mention relief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The lasting part. In the Dutch app study, 44% of respondents said a ghosting experience had long-term effects on their mental health, most often lowered self-esteem (89 people), while 28 said they’d had little or no emotional response<\/a>. Ghosted people blamed the ghoster (59%), themselves (37%), or the app (17%)<\/a>, and reported more pain when they’d met in person and talked longer. Across three US samples, people who had been ghosted reported higher attachment anxiety than people with no ghosting history (d = .24)<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the honest null. The Spanish study defined “victims” strictly, three or more episodes in the past year from a dating partner: 4.8% met that bar for ghosting, 14.1% for breadcrumbing, 2.4% for both. Breadcrumbing was associated with lower satisfaction with life, more helplessness and more loneliness. Recurrent ghosting was not significantly associated with any of the three.<\/a> The authors say the null doesn’t mean ghosted people felt nothing; it may mean that an ending, however rude, is something people recover from, while breadcrumbing never ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Less, in the short run, which is the point. In two samples totalling 595 recent breakups, people who ended things directly reported more breakup distress than people who ghosted (2.12 vs. 1.77 on a 4-point scale), while recipients reported almost identical distress whether ghosted or told directly (2.74 vs. 2.73)<\/a>. Being the one dumped was the dominant factor either way. The same study found ghosted relationships averaged about 25 weeks versus 37 for direct breakups, with commitment still above the scale midpoint<\/a>, so ghosting isn’t reserved for flings. It also found the one motive that replicated: ghosters rated disinterest as a bigger driver than the people they ghosted assumed<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ghosters’ own reasons, in the Dutch study: blaming the ghostee (67%), blaming themselves (44%), blaming the app (29%), no obligation to communicate (22%), concern for the other person (16%)<\/a>. The qualitative US work sorts motives into convenience, attraction, negative interactions, the state of the relationship, and safety<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The longer run. A two-wave panel of German 16-to-21-year-olds (978 at wave one, 415 at wave two, about five months apart) found ghosting friends predicted higher depressive tendencies later (\u03b2 = .18), ghosting romantic partners predicted no change in the ghoster’s self-esteem or depressive tendencies, and feeling overloaded by communication predicted more ghosting of partners (\u03b2 = .15)<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The number that explains the safety exception. Pew’s survey of 4,860 US adults found that among online-dating users, 37% had someone continue to contact them after they said they were not interested, 35% received an unsolicited sexually explicit message or image, and 28% were called an offensive name; among women 18 to 34, the continued-contact figure was 60%<\/a>. When people say they ghosted for safety, this is the population they’re describing. Going quiet on someone who won’t accept a no is not the behavior the rest of this post is about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The literature is young and small. A 2025 systematic review found eleven studies of ghosting in emerging adults, published between 2019 and 2024, covering 4,981 participants with a mean age of about 21<\/a>, and flagged the lack of any standardized way to measure it. The head-to-head experiment was 176 people, mostly women, recalling relationships that averaged about three years and ended about two years earlier; its authors say plainly that it should not be generalized to dating-app endings after a few days of messaging<\/a>. Most of the rest is cross-sectional self-report, which can’t tell you which way any arrow points. Nobody has yet run a controlled study on the most common ghost of all, the one three messages in. Everything above is the best available, not the last word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 44% who reported lasting effects<\/a>, and the higher attachment anxiety among people who’ve been ghosted<\/a>, are real findings, and if either describes you, it’s worth raising with a health care provider. A new match isn’t a treatment for that, and a good one won’t try to be. For the rest of it, Monday’s pillar<\/a> has the full picture and Wednesday’s comparison<\/a> has the exits ranked. What we can say about the LFGdating app<\/a> is small and true: a human answers every member’s question within a day, and every profile was reviewed by one before you saw it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every ghosting statistic with a primary source: how common it is, the perception gap, who ghosts, what it does to both sides, and the viral numbers we refused.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,17,728],"tags":[955,842,953,966,409,843,489],"class_list":["post-2900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dating-advice","category-online-dating","category-research","tag-dating-psychology","tag-dating-research","tag-ghosting","tag-ghosting-statistics","tag-online-dating","tag-online-dating-statistics","tag-research"],"yoast_head":"\nThe perception gap<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How acceptable people say it is<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Who ghosts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What it does to the ghosted<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What it does to the ghoster<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The mirror image<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Where the evidence runs out<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Numbers we refused<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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One last note<\/h2>\n\n\n\n