Internal study from invite-only dating app Hanker analyzes 120k+ member relationships across diet, device, income, and education using return time as a relationship-length proxy.
Key Takeaways
Methodology caveat upfront: return time to the platform is used as a proxy for relationship duration – explicitly acknowledged as imperfect.
Meat eaters showed 40% longer median return time (26.3 vs 18.7 months); largest effect size of any variable tested, p < 0.001.
Android users outlasted iOS users by 18% (24.1 vs 20.4 months); gap most pronounced in the 28-38 age bracket.
Lower income and lower education each correlated with longer return times independently; both effects held after controlling for the other variable.
All four findings are self-reported demographics, not peer-reviewed, and correlation-causation limits are explicitly noted by Hanker.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters immediately flagged that Hanker is a sugar daddy app targeting wealthy men and “attractive and ambitious women,” making the dataset non-generalizable to broader dating populations.
Consensus: the framing as a general relationship study is misleading given the platform’s explicit elite/transactional positioning; findings should be read as internal product analytics, not relationship science.
