And during high school and college I was seriously involved with The Rocky Horror Picture Show, I must have “dated” half a dozen Janets & Columbias.
Don’t discount the going to church as a social activity.
School, church, work, extra activities… that’s how many people met others ‘back when.’
Friend of a friend, circle of friends, social networking… worked pretty much the same pre net as it does online now. (maybe a smaller sample size available then, but still pretty similar.)
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Boy that was fun.
My opinion as a man without kids, is that you want your kids to have computer separate from your own from the get go. This is not for their convenience but yours. You need to monitor your children’s computer activities much like you need to monitor their other activities.
The same way it does now: you date people you work with, socialize with through clubs/hobbies/church/whatever you do in your free time, meet at the bar, sit next to on the bus, etc. Most of the people I know (I’m about your age) still use this as their primary source for dates.
“Back then” if you wanted what internet dating provides you with today (the ability to rapidly sift through many potential partners who are all looking for a mate as well) you could browse the personal ads in the paper or join a dating service. If you go WAY back you might have enlisted some sort of matchmaker to help you with your search.
College.
We actually had something called “computer dating” in the '80s. You’d fill out a multiple choice questionnaire on paper, a data-entry person would enter your responses into a computer program, and the program would try to match people up based on the percentage of matching responses.
Hell, they had that in the 1960s, and it formed a plot line in the film Last Summer. (I love that movie because the soundtrack was done by members of The Band.)
Wrong thread, perhaps?
ca. 1964: I once participated in a “computer” match/dance with a college across town. Everyone filled out a questionnaire about interests; these were input to 80-column IBM punch cards, and they were matched male to female. Supposedly, your perfect match was someone of the opposite sex who had similar interests to yours.
I was given a card with my date’s name. I picked her up, we went out. One date.
Only one date.
My conclusion? Maybe computer punch card dating isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
We were very strange before the net. We actually went out of our homes and met people.
The most I’ve ever gotten out of online dating was a single phone call. Never a coffee or a lunch date, all the ladies seemed want is an internet boyfriend, no thanks.
Sure there is. ahem
“I was at the sex club, alone, and I saw there were a few gangbang girls out on the Big Bed. Man it was crowded! That’s when I saw her. Although her mouth was busy, her eyes were not. She stared at me with a bobbing stare I just couldn’t look away from. Once she took a hydration break from the bed we wandered to the hot tubs, talked the hours into the night, that’s when I knew it was love”.
OK sure it’s not as likely to happen, but it could!
Paul: at a gym.
Richard: through friends.
Bob: at work.
Bob II: at a party.
Geoffrey: nightclub.
Walter: damned if I remember.
College imho is by far the best place to meet your mate. You are constantly meeting dozens of new people, even living down the hall from many of them (go co-ed dorms!)
After college, the number of new people that you meet each day diminishes (especially people with similar education levels and interest).
For all those people who are like, “that’s too young to find your mate,” well, I’m sorry you feel that way. That sounds like a personal problem on your side. It doesn’t change the fact that college is a great way to meet lots of people in your same age/ intellectual ability with similar interest. Lots of people just don’t take that opportunity and really run with it.
The Washington Post used to have an “In Search Of” section in the classifieds. You had to pay for your ad which kind of filtered out the riff raff. I never used it but it sure was good reading.
I’ve met all the women I’ve dated for the last ten years or so through dancing.
If you’re a guy and you want to meet women in real life, learn to dance. Something with a partner: salsa, swing, two-step. There are often more women than men in social dancing, and you will be able to tell almost immediately if you have any physical chemistry with each other.
Or they can do like I did and go back to college in their 30s 
Let’s see, of the girls that I’ve dated for an extended period of time, they were either friends of friends, college classmates/dorm mates, fellow employees, or somebody I met while working. The wife, though, I did meet through Match.com.
College was by far the best time to meet plenty of people of your preferred sex and orientation. That said, that was way, way, way too early for me to settle down.
Lots of ‘College’, ‘College’, ‘College’ responses.
Of course, some of us went for Engineering Degrees in college (in colleges known for Engineering and Science, not so much for Liberal Arts and Business).
With a ratio of 1:4 Female to Male, college was NOT by far the best time to meet plenty of people of my preferred gender…
Actually, one thing I have sort of noticed (confirmation bias?) - at least on Long Island (NY) there were many Dance Clubs* in the 1980s/1990s (and these were a pretty good place to meet women, at least if you liked to dance) - think 007, Spizes, Spit, Malibu, OBI, Krystals, Maxine’s (whatever that place on Rte 110 that’s now a strip-club was), Trilogy, Spratz, etc. The number of clubs seems to have dwindled down to almost nothing nowadays - more or less leftovers like Zachary’s or Tabu/Oz or Glo (the old Spratz)… Have Dance clubs fallen that much out of favor (and taken Singles Dances held at Hotels/Churchs/Halls along with them)?
*Yes, all right, Dance Clubs fall under the technical definition of Discos - dancing to DJ’s playing records/tapes/CDs/music files - but the DJs of those clubs wouldn’t dare play actual Disco music back in the 80s/90s
Computer dating of the early 1990s - I still have some pens from Calculated Couples - used to run every Sunday at the 56th Fighter Group in Farmingdale, but the only time to go there was on Holiday weekends (Monday off) to assure a decent crowd - the strategy was to chat up every female you could before the actually matching session began - the ‘find you matches portion’ was often a bust (lots more men than women signed up), OTOH once in a while I’d meet a lady during the pre-chat period. I think Calculated Couples now exists only out in Arizona (I searched on-line last year when I stumbled across those pens in a drawer)