Are Dating Apps the End of Civilization?
What if you could bypass months of boring dates and dumb conversations and handpick the hottest person around instead? What if you ditch the inconvenience of actually meeting someone and just skip straight to the banging? These are the questions the founders of Tinder and other dating apps asked themselves before unleashing their creations on the world. Despite having middle-school level understandings of relationship psychology, they're all now billionaires, and the world is burning — right?
How Do Dating Apps Differ From More Traditional Sites?
The human attention span is shrinking dramatically, prompting businesses across the world to tailor their ads and services to a newly unfocused audience. Playing upon this trend, dating app makers have differentiated their products from others by streamlining features to an almost ridiculous degree of simplicity.
Where older sites like Match and OK Cupid require users to fill out personality surveys and scroll through pages of informative text, Tinder, Bumble, and others ask much less. All you have to do is make a brief profile and swipe through the pictures that pop up automatically based on your location.
This might seem like an inconsequential change, but it’s at least as much of a leap as the one regular dating sites once made from real-world interactions.
What Gets Lost When You Venture Into Cyberspace?
Have you ever seen someone’s Instagram or Facebook profile and found yourself puzzled or surprised — pleasantly or otherwise – when you met them in real life? There are big differences between seeing someone in the real world and seeing them online. In person, you can:
Watch how they move
See how they speak
See what they really look like
Compare their height and size to your own
Get a sense of their personality
Decide whether they smell good or bad
Discover how they respond to you
All of this is much harder to do by looking at a two-dimensional, watered-down profile. This isn’t to say that you can’t get any sense of someone from their bio, it’s just that the internet is a much shallower place than reality.
Most traditional dating sites make some attempt at identifying compatibility. This is why companies like Match argue that internet dates are superior to regular ones. You might think that girl at the back office is cute, they say, but what are the chances she’s cool with your pygmy marmoset that dictates your every decision? Online, you can find someone with the same weird obsessions and fetishes as you.
Sadly, the leap from sites to apps has distilled prospects to the point where the only signs of compatibility you can find come from a few pictures and a couple of lines of text.
Do Dating Apps Work?
Various studies have been done on the effectiveness of online dating platforms. Most are dubious, thanks to their ties to app-makers, but a few legitimate researchers are exploring the modern meetups as well. A Stanford University study found that 40% of new relationships began online — up almost 20% from 2009.
While there’s still no long-term data on the longevity of online pairings, it’s probably safe to assume that app-based marriages are roughly as likely to end in divorce as others, plus or minus a few percentage points. If you’ve known someone long enough to marry them, you’ve hopefully gotten to know them and their family well enough that your initial manner of meeting doesn't matter much anymore.
So why then are so many people complaining about Tinder and similar platforms? Because they fundamentally change the selection process.
Does Tinder Turn Men Into Psychopaths and Women Into Jaded Narcissists?
If you were born after 9/11, you might not understand just how brutal things used to be for single people. In a bygone era, men used to approach women at the office, at the bar, or even on the street, risking rejection or mean rebukes with every attempt. After successfully obtaining a phone number, a man had to call a woman, hoping against hope that her number was indeed her number.
Things were tough for women as well. Women who struggled to find interested men often waited months or even years for the right man to approach. Exceptionally attractive women intimidated all but the most overconfident tools. The notion of a woman initiating with a man was simply dismissed as preposterous.
Today, you can swipe away your troubles without fear of rejection. Most apps even stack matches at the top of your pile.
This might be good for your feelings, but some think it isn't great for society. Here's the argument as per Jordan Peterson:
Where most men throughout history had relatively few real romantic options, apps tell modern men that there’s an infinite number of women lining up to date them. Since these interactions are based only on appearances, less attractive men tread a hampster wheel of failed interactions, while the most attractive men accumulate fawning harems of women without trying. For their part, women get tons of dates before inevitably being tossed aside for more exciting prospects.
The resulting output is psychopathic men and angry, narcissistic women. Right?
There’s certainly some degree of truth to Peterson's view, but it fails to recognize that women aren’t simply machines that have sex with men after each mediocre date. Sure, some women are ok with insignificant hookups, but plenty prefer lasting relationships and aren’t so willing to partake in male shenanigans. Similarly, not all attractive men are interested in tossing great matches aside just to endure tedious and unproductive dates instead.
Which Is Broken — the Apps or the World?
There’s no denying that internet dating has had a drastic effect on society. Younger generations are having sex less often than ever before and turning to their devices for solutions far more. Who’s to blame for this? The vague prospect of rejection, I reckon.
Approaching a potential partner has always been terrifying because rejection has always been hurtful. But without it, there’s little room for self-reflection or growth. Today, lots of young people are growing up with the idea that rejection isn’t necessary.
Here's the thing, though — no app can eliminate bad feelings. Modern couples on first, second, and later dates are just as likely to reject each other today as they ever were. Devices simply delay the inevitable.
Tinder and its emulators are here to stay, but so are pain and misery. Perhaps a large portion of society will realize this and ditch the simple solutions.
If you’re worried about the effects of technology on your romantic life, maybe you're looking at things the wrong way. It isn't apps that broke dating, it's the whole disconnected, modern world. Consider how a first date with someone from the internet is like meeting someone at a bar. In both situations, you don’t know the other person, and you’re looking for reasons to turn them down. Maybe they’re weird. Maybe they’re a serial killer. You have a very small window, therefore, to decide whether to give them a chance. Is this ideal? No.
If you're struggling, try doing something in the real world. Whatever you’re into, do that, as long as the gender you like also does it. Are you studying medicine? Attend events or do shifts at a hospital. Are you into animals? Volunteer at a rescue. This way, you’ll have a long window to meet your potential prospects, and you’re already into the same stuff. Better than a rando from a bar? Yes.
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