Short answers, pulled from the story.
The earliest recorded use of the noun "date" in a romantic context appeared in 1896 in the writings of George Ade, a columnist for the Chicago Record. Ade used it to describe a woman meeting a man outside the private sphere of the home or court.
Com-Pat, started by Joan Ball in 1964, was the earliest commercially successful computerized dating service in either the US or the UK. Operation Match, launched a year later by Harvard University students, is often incorrectly called the first; both Ball and the Operation Match founders acknowledged that European computer dating services preceded and inspired them.
About 30% of Americans report using a dating site. A 2005 Pew Research survey of 3,215 adults estimated that three million Americans had entered long-term relationships or marriage after meeting on a dating website.
About half of long-distance couples eventually reunite geographically. Roughly one-third of those reunited relationships end within three months of reunion, as partners adjust to daily proximity and lose some of the independence characteristic of long-distance dating.
Dating practices spread globally through cultural exchange, colonisation, and mass media. In Japan, the word deeto was borrowed phonetically from English during the Taishō period (1912-1926). In China, yuēhuì adopted romantic meaning in the early 20th century under Western influence. In Arabic-speaking societies, the borrowed term daiting entered colloquial usage among urban youth and diaspora populations.
A 2004 estimate found that 20% of US high school girls aged 14-18 had been hit, slapped, shoved, or forced into sexual activity. Several studies suggest that 12%-15% of men and 21%-40% of women have been involved in some form of dating or courtship violence.