We are obsessed with youth in the Western world. As a society, we are flooded with images of the young, pretty, and happy who promise we will be like them by buying this face cream, car, or this insurance policy—this fallacy based on a fantastic and circular equation in which youth=beauty=success=desirability=love=happiness=youth, and so on. One only needs to look at our romantic icons to see the inextricable link between youth and romance. Juliet and Pocahontas, two of our most famous romantic characters (as praised by Peggy Lee in the classic love song "Fever"), were so young when their turbulent romances began that they would not be of legal age today. In the middle of all of this, it's easy to think that there is no hope for romance past thirty.

Fortunately, this is not the case! On the contrary, our senior citizens flock to the dating scene in droves. They have most likely been doing it for years, but the older generation, especially in Britain, is renowned for their discretion, almost to the point of coyness. Fortunately for social analysts and writers like myself, a convergence of recent phenomena now allows us to gain a complete picture of what our seniors are doing!

In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of "silver surfers," or people of retirement age or older who are web literate to varying degrees and use the Internet regularly. In addition, the online dating industry experienced rapid growth during the same time. As a result of these two phenomena, we can see from the statistics that it's not just young people looking for love online. For example, a recent study conducted by a top company, with well over 14,000 active online users over 65 compared to the average age group of members average membership of their age group of slightly more than 25,000. With figures like this, it's easy to see why seniors are regarded as a critical demographic by those of us in the online dating industry, and it's no surprise that classes in Internet dating are springing up at places like Pleasant Hill Senior Centre in Contra Costa, California.

With a population aging as the baby boom generation reaches their 60s and continues to have excellent knowledge and awareness of current and developing technologies into their later years, this phenomenon can only grow. That is precisely how it should be! So why should spring chickens have a monopoly on the pleasures of spring?