London’s younger workers appear to be returning to offices and seeking nights out, according to data from a mobile-phone dating app that matches 10,000 people a week.

       The Thursday app, which allows those seeking a partner to line up dates one day a week, has seen a shift in activity between May and August from residential areas such as Shoreditch and Fulham to the financial district in the City. Almost three-quarters of its 65,000 users in the UK capital are millennials aged between 24 and 36.

       The findings are one of the real-time indicators suggesting how lifestyle and working patterns are changing during the Covid-19 pandemic. Thursday’s data starts in May as lockdown rules were loosening and provide a more localised glimpse into activity in London than broader data collected by the government.

       “People have become so fed up with video dating” features introduced by rival apps during lockdown, Matt McNeill Love, co-founder of Thursday, said in an interview. Now, it’s “match up, grab a drink after work – really simple”.

       Thursday has been downloaded by over 90,000 people in London and New York since it launched this year and is one of a handful of dating apps that started after lockdowns. It’s also raised ￡2.5mil (RM14.40mil) in seed funding, double its initial target.

       It’s anticipating a boom in dating will become a more permanent part of London life. “Like taxes and death, people are always going to want to fall in love,” McNeill Love said. – Bloomberg