Digital Infidelity Report [2026]

This Digital Infidelity Report synthesizes the current data on online infidelity — across dating apps, social media, private messaging, and AI companions — from the Institute for Family Studies, YouGov, the Kinsey Institute, Gallup, and peer-reviewed research. Its defining pattern is a wide gap between attitude and behavior: 89% of Americans call extramarital affairs morally wrong (Gallup 2025), yet one-third admit to having cheated physically, emotionally, or digitally (YouGov 2022). Digital channels did not create infidelity; they lowered its activation threshold. This report breaks the data down by platform, behavior, and discovery method, as part of the infidelity research hub.

What is online infidelity

Online infidelity is a romantic or sexual relationship with someone outside a primary partnership, initiated online and sustained through digital channels. A 2010 paper in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry identifies three defining features: expected exclusivity is violated, the relationship is secret, and it causes consequential damage to the primary relationship.

The American Psychological Association notes that internet affairs can be just as devastating as in-person ones, producing insecurity, anger, and jealousy even without physical contact. A 2008 Australian study cited in the same APA piece found 71% of respondents considered cybersex cheating and 82% viewed an in-person meeting with an online contact as unfaithful.

Online infidelity takes several distinct forms:

• Explicit digital contact — sexting, sending nude images, or engaging in video-based sexual interaction with a third party
• Emotional affairs — intimate bonds formed online that involve secrecy, emotional dependency, and preferential disclosure over the primary partner
• Dating app use while partnered — maintaining an active profile or pursuing connections on apps designed for dating or hookups
• Social media infidelity behaviors — concealing messages, following romantic exes privately, or sharing intimacies digitally that belong in the primary relationship
• AI companion intimacy — sustained romantic or sexual interaction with AI platforms in ways a partner has not consented to

A 2022 meta-analytic review in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found that online infidelity occurs in approximately one-quarter of all marriages. The same review notes infidelity is the most common reason for breakup across 160 cultures studied. Roughly two-thirds of individuals who pursue online sexual contacts subsequently arrange an in-person meeting.

How digital channels compare: dating apps, social media, and messaging

The three main digital channels for infidelity differ in prevalence, demographic skew, and how partners define the behavior as cheating.

A February 2025 Institute for Family Studies survey (n=2,000, ages 18–39) found 11% of married young adults on a dating app. That is close to the 14% of unmarried adults in the same cohort. Married app users are also more than twice as likely to report strong life dissatisfaction (19% vs. 8% of non-users).

A 2019 YouGov Omnibus survey found that 17% of current dating-app users cited cheating as one reason for using the platform. Married users (10%), millennials (11%), and parents (11%) each ran above the population average of 7%.

A meta-analysis of 50 studies (18,122 adults ages 18–29) published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior via PubMed found 38.3% had sent sexts and 47.7% had exchanged them reciprocally. Non-consensual forwarding occurred in 15.0% of cases.

What counts as micro-cheating and emotional affairs online

Public consensus on where digital behaviors cross into infidelity is broader than many expect:

• Secret online emotional relationships: 72% of U.S. adults consider these infidelity, versus 76% for equivalent in-person emotional relationships — a near-identical threshold, per the 2019 iFidelity Survey (IFS/YouGov, n=2,000). Among married respondents specifically, 76% classified online emotional affairs as cheating.
• Following an ex on social media: 16% call it “always cheating”; another 45% call it “sometimes cheating” — a majority assign some infidelity weight to the act, per a 2017 Deseret News/YouGov survey analyzed by the Institute for Family Studies.
• Sending flirtatious messages: rated “always cheating” by 59% of women versus 42% of men in the same 2017 survey.
• Maintaining an active online dating profile: rated “always cheating” by 70% of women versus 55% of men.
• Pornography use: a significant predictor of emotional affairs in the iFidelity Survey regression analysis, alongside following exes online and flirting with someone other than a spouse.

Among ever-married or formerly married adults in the 2019 iFidelity Survey (n=1,313), 7% reported a strictly emotional affair, 5% a sex-only affair, and 10% an affair combining both. Women made up 56% of emotional-only affairs; men made up 75% of sex-only affairs.

The 2019 iFidelity Survey found that every statistically significant predictor of a strictly emotional affair was digital: pornography use, following an ex online, and flirting outside the relationship. These behaviors appear to function as early markers of emotional-affair risk.

Who engages in online infidelity

Within digital channels specifically, the clearest demographic signal is dating-app use among the partnered. A 2025 IFS/YouGov survey found 18% of married men under 40 are currently active on a dating app, versus 6% of married women — a threefold gap, even though both groups are married (IFS 2025).

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when in-person contact was restricted, roughly half of reported infidelity moved online or onto messaging rather than occurring in person (PMC 2025) — the clearest natural experiment in how channel availability shapes behavior. The same study found men (28.1%) reported pandemic-era infidelity at more than double the rate of women (10.9%).

The broader question of who cheats more overall — and how the gender gap has narrowed sharply at younger ages — sits outside the digital frame and is covered in depth, using longitudinal General Social Survey data, in Infidelity Statistics: Who Cheats More, Men or Women?.

How social media platforms enable infidelity

Social media amplifies infidelity risk through three conditions: access to past and present contacts, private messaging invisible to the primary partner, and emotional disclosure opportunities that compete with the relationship.

• Conflict as mechanism: a 2013 study of 205 Facebook users (published via PubMed) found that high Facebook use correlated with emotional cheating, breakup, and divorce. The association was strongest in relationships of three years or less. Facebook-related conflict mediated the link.
• Concealment behaviors: a 2017 PMC study of 338 adults (Journal of Sex Research) found 12% uncomfortable if their partner read their messages, 6% wanted to hide some, and 7% shared intimacies with others instead. Higher concealment scores predicted lower relationship satisfaction (b = −0.03, p < .001).
• Pandemic acceleration: one married-person dating site reported 17,000 new members per day in early COVID-19, up from 1,500 per day in 2019, per a July 2020 PMC paper. About 20% of adults in committed relationships contacted an ex during the pandemic; 13% of those in active relationships did so seeking hookups or romantic rekindling.
• Relationship ambivalence as driver: a 2021 PMC study of 341 Hispanic women found 29% showed elevated infidelity-related behaviors on social networks. 53% preferred to conceal conversations; 49% reported discomfort if their partner read their messages. Relationship ambivalence was the strongest predictor (r = 0.52, p < .001).

The 2013 Facebook study reflects conditions that have shifted as TikTok, Instagram DMs, and Snapchat have diversified the social media landscape. The concealment-behavior data from 2017 and 2021, however, measures attitudes rather than platform-specific behaviors, making it more durable as evidence.

How online infidelity is discovered

1. Phone snooping: nearly one in five (19%) Americans have gone through a partner’s phone without permission, per a 2019 YouGov survey (n=1,236). Of those who snooped, 33% found evidence confirming prior suspicions and 18% discovered something they had not previously suspected. 73% say they do not regret doing it.

2. Demographics of phone snooping: Millennial women are the most likely to check a partner’s phone without permission — 33% admit to having done so, compared to 23% of Millennial men and 17% of Baby Boomers, per the same 2019 YouGov data.

3. Broader digital monitoring: a 2022 PMC systematic review found that in one general-population survey, over 65% of adults had used technology to monitor a partner — including hacking email accounts. A separate study in the same review found 43% of men had accessed a partner’s password-protected accounts, while 15% used GPS to track location.

4. Online infidelity leaves a recoverable trail: approximately half of pandemic-era infidelity occurred online or via messages rather than in person, per the 2025 PMC study. Digital infidelity generates a preserved record — conversation histories, image files, account logs. That record shapes both the discovery pathway and the evidentiary options for those seeking formal documentation.

5. Limitation of self-snooping: informal phone checks carry legal risks depending on jurisdiction, may destroy evidence through mishandling, and produce findings that are difficult to document for legal proceedings. Covert monitoring of a partner’s accounts without authorization may also engage computer-access statutes.

AI companions and the emerging frontier of digital infidelity

AI companions introduce a third-party dynamic with no human counterpart, forcing couples and researchers to re-examine whether betrayal requires another person.

A September 2025 study by DatingAdvice.com and the Kinsey Institute found 61% of singles view sexting or falling in love with an AI as absolutely cheating. Growing consensus holds that AI-mediated intimacy falls within contested infidelity boundaries, not just human-to-human digital contact.

The APA Monitor documented that women feel more threatened by the emotional betrayal of an online affair, while men report greater distress from physical encounters. AI companions can now sustain emotional and pseudo-sexual interaction: remembering user preferences, generating personalized responses, simulating attachment. For many partnered users, the emotional-betrayal dimension of that dynamic may prove more salient than its explicitly sexual elements.

No peer-reviewed prevalence data on AI companion use within ongoing relationships was available from whitelisted sources as of June 2026. The Kinsey Institute data captures singles’ attitudes; partnered-adult prevalence data remains an open gap. The infidelity trends post tracks how digital-channel shift has changed reported rates over time — a useful parallel lens for contextualizing AI companion data as it emerges.

How this report was compiled

This report synthesizes peer-reviewed research and large-sample national polling into a single reference on digital infidelity. Figures are drawn only from primary sources — peer-reviewed journals via PubMed and PMC, the Institute for Family Studies, the Kinsey Institute, Gallup, YouGov, and the Pew Research Center — and each is reported with its sample size, year, and population where the source provides them. Where a behavior has no defensible prevalence figure — AI-companion use inside ongoing relationships is the clearest current example — the report says so rather than estimating. Because self-reported infidelity is consistently underreported, the rates here should be read as floors, not ceilings.

The report is maintained by the licensed investigators at Discreet Investigations, who work cheating-spouse and digital-evidence cases across Ontario, and is reviewed against new primary data as it is published. Last reviewed June 2026.

What online infidelity data means for relationships and investigations

The gap between attitudes and behavior is the defining pattern in this data. 89% of Americans call extramarital affairs morally wrong (Gallup 2025), yet one-third admit to having cheated and half report being cheated on (YouGov 2025). Digital channels have not created infidelity, but they have lowered the activation threshold: access to former partners, strangers, and AI-generated connection is now ambient.

For couples navigating suspicion, commitment level shapes digital risk. YouGov’s 2022 data shows that cheating rates among casual-relationship participants (36%) exceed those among cohabiting partners (26%) and married adults (13%). The 3-in-10 U.S. adults who have used a dating site or app (Pew Research Center 2023) represent a population that ranges from genuinely single to actively coupled.

When suspicion reaches the point of documented evidence, informal phone checks risk legal exposure and mishandled data. As licensed PIs, we regularly see clients who attempted self-documentation first — screenshots under duress, account access of uncertain legality, or confrontations that tipped off the subject too early. The digital record is often recoverable even after deletion; the challenge is capturing it lawfully.

Professional cheating spouse investigations use surveillance, open-source intelligence, and legal account monitoring to build documented records. For cases involving device evidence, surveillance services can establish behavioral patterns before any confrontation occurs.