Is it possible to find true love on an app?
Many young people seem to think so, as 53% of 18- to 29-year-olds report having used a dating site or app at some point in their lives, according to the Pew Research Center. Moreover, 20% of those in the same age group who were married, living with a partner or in a committed romantic relationship say they met their partner through an online service like Hinge, Bumble or Tinder.
But as dating apps have exploded in popularity and using them is no longer stigmatized as it once was, their users have encountered new problems. Frequent ghosting and rejection, misleading virtual profiles, and the feeling that endless swiping on an app makes dating superficial rather than a means of forging a genuine connection can all detract from the experience of online dating.
The many drawbacks of dating apps have led some young people, myself included, to reject them altogether. TikTok, a fairly reliable indicator of the direction of the cultural tide, is inundated with videos of young men and women claiming to have ditched online dating in favor of meeting people “in the wild,” and even not-so-conspiratorial theories that dating app companies secretly want to prevent their users from finding love so that they can retain their customers.
But are the dating apps really all that bad? Do young people find that online dating, despite all of its flaws, could still be our best shot at finding a long-term relationship in the digital age?
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I had a hunch that the superficiality of the online dating experience that had turned me off from the apps had likely done the same to others, but I was willing to be proved wrong.
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To find out, I decided to ask some friends who’ve all been active on dating apps at one point in their lives or another. Their reflections on their own use of online dating services, as well as that of their peers, helped me gain perspective not only on the wide range of experiences that people in my generation have on dating apps but also on how the apps’ ubiquity has altered the dating landscape generally.
My first interviewee was Sarah Park, a 24-year-old living in New York City who works in trade finance. She told me she “started using dating apps for fun” during her freshman year of college but only began using them to date during her junior year.
There was a bit of a learning curve when it came to using the apps, she explained. Once she figured out how to decide whether or not to meet up with a match “by texting them, seeing how they spoke, and learning a little bit about them,” her experience with online dating greatly improved. “I guess my filtering skills just got better,” she told me.
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According to Park, “People in our age group are so busy that in order to meet as many people as you can and find the right one, dating apps are the way to go.”
While the likelihood that you’ll match and hit it off with each person who comes across your screen is quite low, she said, “the fact that you can meet so many people so easily makes up for it. It’s quantity over quality.”
Young adults clearly view online dating services as useful tools for meeting potential dates and expanding their dating pools. But do they have much faith that the people they meet on dating apps could someday become their long-term romantic partners?
I knew it was definitely possible to meet your future husband or wife online – I did just recently attend the bachelorette party of a woman who met her fiancé on Hinge, after all – but I suspected that the odds of that were low.
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For answers, I turned to Adam Lehodey, 23, an undergraduate student at Columbia University. He told me he had used Tinder and Hinge in the past but, more recently, has stopped using dating apps in favor of meeting potential partners in real life.
“Theoretically, dating apps should be a good way to find long-term relationships. But at the same time, the reality is that people are going to make profiles that make themselves seem a lot better (than they are) or obfuscate certain aspects of their personalities,” he told me.
Lehodey said it can be frustrating and take longer to meet a long-term partner through dating apps.
“The compatibility when you’re meeting someone through a dating app is, in my view, going to be lower than if you’re meeting them through friends or places you’re otherwise hanging out because you both have a reason to be there anyway,” he said.
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But what if the presence of dating apps is even affecting how well we’re able to flirt and get into relationships with people we might meet out in the real world?
Deven Mukkamala, a 24-year-old Ph.D. student at Duke University, told me that the biggest pro of dating apps – that they diminish the possibility that expressing one’s interest in someone else will turn out to be awkward or embarrassing – is, paradoxically, also a con.
“In the wild, if you were a guy and you found a girl attractive, you’d have to go up to her and risk great awkwardness and embarrassment to ask her out on a date. The dating app allows you to convey your attraction to someone and vice versa without any of that cost,” he said.
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Being in possession of the safer option of using a dating app, according to Mukkamala, makes one less likely to take the risk of pursuing someone they met or could potentially meet in real life.
This dynamic affects different groups of dating app users in different ways, he told me. If you’re a man who is less successful on the apps, for example, you may lose self-confidence and be even more hesitant to approach a woman in real life – where you might, in fact, have better odds of success. Whereas if you’re a man who does well on the apps, “it’s very difficult for you to commit because in this environment (of the dating app), you’re getting more validation than you would in the wild without any of the costs.”
Dating apps, it turns out, are not just another avenue through which people can meet the potential loves of their lives, just as going to a bar or being set up by friends are. Rather, they’re an innovation that’s greatly changed the way that young people, in particular, flirt, pursue, date, commit to, and just generally interact with one another both online and off.
So to answer the question I started off this piece with, yes, it is possible to find true love on an app. But we shouldn’t let our iPhone addictions blind us to the possibility that if we take a bit of a risk, we may just end up finding love where previous generations did – that is, in the wild.
Surya Gowda is a fact-checking fellow with USA TODAY Opinion.
