As a young person writing a review of SilverSingles, a dating app meant for people over 50, I want to be careful not to sound too flip or condescending. I could fill this piece with hack jokes like “Dating for old people? Isn’t that just Facebook Dating?” But the truth is there’s nothing wrong with trying to find love at any stage in your life. All sorts of people deserve companionship. Unfortunately, while SilverSingles has an admirable goal of delivering later-in-life happiness, few parts of the app feel specifically designed to achieve it. 

Getting Started With SilverSingles

You can use SilverSingles on the web as well as on your Android or iPhone device. I mostly tested the service on an iPhone 11.

When I first signed up for SilverSingles, I immediately noticed how closely it resembles fellow Spark Networks dating app EliteSingles. The opening questionnaire, which generates a matching score to pair you with other users, appears to be identical. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, EliteSingles’ questionnaire is one of the best things about it. I like how thought-provoking the questions are without dragging on, like similar quizzes from eharmony and OkCupid. 

However, this was also the first clue that SilverSingles wasn’t going to be quite as specialized as I hoped. Prompts like “I love mingling at social events” and “I’m impulsive” should apply to anyone. You can also adjust how much you care whether or not your partner agrees with you on a certain topic. But there’s nothing acknowledging how an older average audience might feel differently about, say, having children. Honestly, the biggest difference is that the stock photos here highlight beautiful old people instead of beautiful young people. 

SilverSingles also plays fast and loose when it comes to age requirements. I created a profile with my actual age (29) and experienced no pushback. Depending on where in the app I searched for specific age ranges, sometimes I couldn’t go younger than 50. But other times I found plenty of other alleged twenty-somethings inexplicably on the app. SilverSingles’ focus on older users feels about as tangible as EliteSingles’ focus on “elite” users—more of a social marketing hook than anything else. 

Interface and Profiles

SilverSingles’ interface will also feel very familiar to anyone who knows EliteSingles, though the predominant color is red instead of green. Again, this isn’t a wholly bad thing. Zoosk is also a Spark Networks app, but that app looks and feels much worse. On SilverSingles, stylish profiles blend together personal data like your career and your hobbies. Being able to like individual parts of a profile, similar to Hinge, makes those likes feel more personal. Once your photos are approved, visitors can browse through them in the separate gallery tab. The support staff verifies all profiles while keeping private information secure, so privacy shouldn’t be an issue.

Unsurprisingly at this point, all the different browsing options also come from EliteSingles. You get served matches every day, although I didn’t get quite as many matches as I did on EliteSingles. Perhaps because I also looked for same-gender matches? At least all these matches were over 50 years old. The Wildcard matches under the Have You Met section, matches that just barely fall outside your preferences and matching score, frequently gave me matches my own millennial age. This swipe-based method looks a lot like Tinder, arguably one of the most youthful dating apps around. Finally, you can set your own filters to search for whoever you want in the entire user base through the What If feature. 

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Premium Extras

One less-than-ideal trait SilverSingles inherits from EliteSingles is the ungenerous free version. Free users can only like other profiles, see matches, and send matches pre-written icebreaker questions. Viewing visitors, seeing unblurred photos, liking more than 10 daily Wildcard matches, and sending unlimited real messages all require a premium subscription.

Fortunately, you can get all these premium features for a much lower cost compared to EliteSingles. Call it a senior discount. A three-month subscription costs $51, a six-month subscription costs $57, and a year-long subscription costs $103. EliteSingles costs twice as much and all it offers in return are a few more free Wildcard matches and the vague promise of a larger audience. Match and eharmony cost even more, but their popularity does give you more matches to choose from. Match also provides a much better free experience.

Social Distancing With SilverSingles

The COVID-19 pandemic puts everyone at risk, but older people with underlying health problems especially need to stay home and socially distance to keep safe. So I was particularly disappointed to see that, like EliteSingles, SilverSingles offers no kind of video chat for virtual dating. It’s another area where the app doesn’t feel like it’s truly catering to the audience it claims it wants. At least the EliteSingles relationship blog has advice for dating when you’re older. 

For video dating turn to other apps. Bumble, eharmony, Match, and Plenty of Fish all include the feature. Quarantined couples can also use Facebook’s Tuned app to stay connected in these trying times.

December Romance

You could make the argument that a dating app for older people shouldn’t be any different from any other app. Dating apps rely on fickle social factors more than boring technical ones. If SilverSingles builds the audience it wants, that makes it legitimately more valuable to its members even if the app itself is largely identical to another app. That said, it can feel hard to justify SilverSingles as a separate service when EliteSingles already exists. 

Aside from a cheaper price, SilverSingles also does little to fix EliteSingles’ flaws. Without video chat and with so many features behind a paywall, the SilverSingles app itself is just okay. Editors’ Choice dating apps Match and Tinder don’t explicitly target any one demographic, and they are are still the top options for anyone and everyone looking for love.