Dating Apps - To Swipe Or Not To Swipe?

Like many a millennial in the 21st century, I have, throughout the years, been consumed by the online world and the concept of online dating, in particular. For many years, I experienced dating through the means of swiping left, right, up, down, matching and then sliding into the DMs to get that chemistry going and creating that spark to light the Tinder. Easy to access, easy to use and fairly easy to be successful, there has been a serious Buzz around their use. As time has gone on, a person’s success has more and more primarily Hinge’d on these apps to meet a future partner, whether in the short term or the long term.

Right, enough of the dating app puns, what’s this blog all about? Much like with alcohol, where I was once consumed by it all and relied upon it to, in my eyes, live my life, I’ve had the same experience with dating applications across the years and endured a love/hate relationship with them. However, also like alcohol, I’ve had an epiphany about their use, sworn myself to not use them again and really broken down in my head what the major draw of them is and why they are detrimental to not only my way of finding a partner, but to many other people’s too.

After having this epiphany and seeing the world being consumed more and more by the online world, I felt this blog was one that was needed.Hopefully, it will help bring us back from the brink of giving up our whole lives to the virtual world and give people the chance to reflect on how they date in the 21st century, what drives their desire to do it in the manner they do and help them realise the underlying problems that can come from dating via these applications.

Before I get into things, I’m well aware of the prevalence of these apps and their use. I’m also aware of the fact that not everybody is necessarily looking for a life partner via them and that in some instances, people have found true love, gotten married and lived happily ever after. This is by no means a hit piece on those individuals and for those that have had success, I’m glad and wish you well in the future!

The structure of this blog will be as follows:

Basics of a dating app – For those that haven’t delved into the world of dating applications, what they entail and how they work.
Why do people use them – From experience, I’ll break down why I think people use dating applications and what natural instincts they tap into.
Negatives of using them – What I deem to be the negatives that come from dating application usage both to the individual and the collective.
Where should we go from here – What I think is the right way for humans to start connecting with each other again and what benefits it will bring.

Dating Apps & How They Work

For those that have not delved into the weird and wonderful world of dating applications before (I honestly don’t blame you), these are how they typically work. You tend to have a few methods:

Swipe/like, match, chat – Whether you’re swiping right on a profile, a photo or liking a set thing, this signals that you like someone and then you sit and hope that they match with you, allowing you to talk. There are plenty of slight variations on how this is done or who can talk first. E.g., Tinder, Bumble, Hinge
Proximity grid – You’re given a grid of people in your local area and you just straight up message them and hope for the best, really! E.g. Badoo
Search – You set a criteria of what you’re looking for, you get a set of results and from there, you shoot your shot and hope for the best. E.g. POF

What's The Draw?

For those that don’t use them, you must be left wondering what the appeal is. For those of you that have, you probably just accepted it for what it is and never understood what the attraction is. It’s only since I ceased using them and really thought about why I used them, as I feel I was somewhat addicted to them at times, that I’ve come up with a few reasons why people use dating apps:

Ease of use – I’ll give you two scenarios on how you could court a partner and you’ll see what I mean by ease of use when you notice the clear difference:
- Get comfortable on the sofa in your joggers, download an app, create your account, add a few photos to your profile, add a little text. From there, get swiping, matching and chatting. Dating started. OR…
- Get showered, dressed, do your hair, make sure there’s nothing in your teeth, meet up with a group and head to a bar, club or other collective social environment, see someone you want to talk to, pluck up the courage, walk over, introduce yourself and get chatting.
Smaller chance of rejection (and knowing about it) – Even though people are messaging and swiping a lot of people, the actual perception of rejection is a lot smaller. You swipe and swipe, trying your luck with many people and ultimately, you don’t know if you’ve been rejected by them. You just may not have come across their screen just yet and even if you have been rejected, you have many more to swipe for and it’s only through a screen, no one can see you, no one can tell. Ignorance is bliss. In person though, it’s a very different matter! You’re face to face, it’s one on one and you’ve got to take that ego hit after you’ve built up the courage to go over and say hi.
Short-term gratification – When you’re gaining matches and messages from people on these applications, you’re going to want to continue, hence the dopamine release when you’re using them. This is driven by the perception that you will gain an authentic human connection, even though this is occurring virtually and not the real case. As a result, your dopamine system will give you that boost to push you to continue doing it, thinking that it’s motivating you towards something fruitful. Potentially, this may be true in the long-term but this could actually be a negative (something covered later in the blog).
Acceptance/Ego boost – This somewhat ties into what was discussed concerning rejection. When you’re getting matches, you’re going to feel good about yourself, as you will feel accepted and that you’re appealing enough to garner the attention that you are. This can be taken to the next level in wanting to simply get an ego boost from the matches and messages you get without having to really invest in the person.
Numbers game – This one is a simple one. You can try your luck with multiple people in quick succession in the space of a trip to the bathroom (I know there are people out there who Toilet Tinder…), a ride on the bus, on the tube and eventually, you’re going to be successful. People feel they are constantly short of time so need that efficiency! Whereas in person, you’re not going to get that pure efficiency. Once you’ve spoken to one or two people, depending on the size of the room, people may notice, killing your chances.

I’m sure there are a few more reasons that draw people to the apps but I feel that they are the major ones and at least explain some of the reasons as to why I used them in the past.

Dating App Downsides

As I mentioned before, after my self-realisation around the use of dating apps, when I really thought about it, they have a fair few downsides in relation to pure human nature. They affect our mental health, our mentality towards one another, our expectations of another and ultimately, our ability to utilise the pure skill of socialising and relating to another person.

The point of this section is to discuss these negatives, allowing you to reflect on your relationship with dating applications and how they may have changed you, whether it be only one of the things I’m about to discuss or all of them. The key thing is to go into it with an open mind, allow yourself to truly see the person they may be influencing you to become and don’t worry, after that I’ll talk about how you can reconnect with your human side and “recover” from these temporary changes to you.

Lack Of Connection

Have you ever had that experience where you meet someone and instantly connect with them before either of you has really said anything? How about when you’ve come into someone’s presence and you just have a feeling about them that resonates? Now, there are many explanations for why this is but it is something that is recognised by most people to be a thing that happens; you get a “good” or “bad” vibe from someone.

That’s one of the benefits of meeting people in person, whatever the setting may be. A bar, a house party, at the coffee shop, the gym… the list goes on but when you come into their presence, you just have a “feeling” about them. It’s this feeling that can draw you closer to them or push you away depending how it interacts with your own aura and from there, could be the blossoming of something special. Alongside that, there are many social cues that we get from facial expressions, tone of voice and body language to give indications as to whether someone is interested or not. It’s an art in itself to be able to track and work these out.

You simply don’t get that from a screen. You’re guessing. How are you meant to get a vibe from someone based on some 1s and 0s? Can you tell their vocal tone from the messages they are typing or see how their body language reacts to yours?

This is one of the problems with dating applications, coming in two ways. The first one is that people are losing the skill to listen to their gut feeling, connect with their own auras and observe whether they resonate with another individual or not. This is only possible through approaching other people, speaking to them and listening to how you feel within your body when you’re near a person.

The second one is people are losing the skill of simply interacting with another human being. Over the years, we have developed many different ways of communicating with other members of the species through facial expressions, gestures, body language, tone of voice and what we actually say. Being able to learn and read these social cues is a skill in itself and one that is being drastically lost as we move more and more of our interactions online.

As we aren’t able to communicate as well with each other, we also aren’t able to connect as well with one another. This brings about a level of anxiety when it comes to doing things in person due to being, in a sense, unsure about it and worried that you may misjudge a situation that’s only conveyed subtly.

As these two elements combine, we take ourselves away from situations that make us uncomfortable. This leaves us relying upon, what our brains interpret anyway as this, the safety net of these applications to start creating what the brain thinks as human connection. Naturally, you want to connect with someone, it’s only human. But you aren’t truly connecting with someone through a screen. Yet still, you continue to use the application in the hope that it will give you connection you crave, even though it likely won’t. The faux element of the connection is what your brain is driving you towards. Perpetuating the problem, it’s that lack of connection that drives the addiction to stay on these applications to keep striving for a connection, something that is thought to be achievable but constantly just out of reach.

Another way in which there is a lack of connection is the simple fact that with a number of matches and conversations going on at one time, you don’t have the time to concentrate on one person and learn everything about them as you may always be looking for that next best thing, that plan B, keeping multiple matches and conversations alive. This feeds into the numbers game but ultimately, you won’t really learn anything about someone that’s past the superficial part when you’re spreading your attention that thinly across numerous people. Your brain can only handle a certain amount of information streams at once never mind trying to build multiple relationships at once.

As you can imagine, there are plenty of second order effects of this behaviour for all parties involved. This could lead to situations of dating multiple people at once, lack of trust in someone or potentially cheating, or plainly leave you feeling unfulfilled with the connection that you have with your latest match. In turn, this may make you more likely to just ditch what you had and move on without giving things a chance.

Desensitisation

With the interactions happening through a screen, people often forget that there’s another human being on the other side, bringing about various ramifications in the way that they talk or act to other people.

This desensitisation is one of the things that drives the sometimes awful messages that are seen on dating apps. Yes, I’m sure some of them are a “prank”, “joke” or “my friend stole my phone” but for those that aren’t, many will simply be because they don’t acknowledge that there is another human on the other side of the phone. They may also use the safety of the screen to say outrageous things that they wouldn’t normally say to someone in person, such as explicitly stating what they would do to someone or making outlandish requests.

Let’s consider some of the norms that people are facing and put them into the perspective of how crazy they would come across in real life to really emphasise how desensitised people have become. From what I’ve seen, it’s mainly women who experience these outlandish requests and “pranks”. One of the most abhorrent ways of starting or trying to enhance an interaction that is documented by many women is called the “dick pic”. For some reason, throwing out pictures of your sexual appendage is deemed the correct way to go about things online.

To clarify for anyone unsure... if this hasn't been requested, this IS NOT OK! Even then, I would think very carefully about who is receiving that and where it could end up. I think their group chat is the least of your worries.

Transcribing this to the real world, imagine how well that would go down when face to face. You’re in a nightclub, you decide to approach a woman and as you say “hi”, you’re unzipping your trousers and whipping your piece out. This isn’t normal behaviour nor is it correct to be doing it. So why are people doing this online and thinking that it’s acceptable?

Another common online request is for someone to “send nudes”. Again, it has come to be a somewhat normal thing for people to do in relationships but is being pushed as a norm when courting a partner too.

Let’s bring this back to the real world. You’re in a coffee shop and you see someone you like, deciding that you’re going to approach them. As you come to greet them, instead of you opening with “Hey, I’m [insert name], can I get you this?”, your opening line is “Can I see you naked?”. It’s just not right!

There are a number of other things that get sent when it comes to the explicit messages that get thrown around. However, the ultimate bottom line is that none of this is OK. It’s really damaging to the way people are learning how to interact with other humans and what is deemed acceptable, potentially leading to them getting in trouble at varying degrees.

Just a small reminder that sending explicit pictures unannounced to people can get you into trouble with the law. But even alongside that, it's not OK to do such a thing.

By normalising what is done online, this desensitisation goes in the reverse direction and brings it into the offline sphere. This causes people to be too forward with their requests, leads them to expect~~ing~~ things to work in a binary and transactional manner between two people and for them to deem that certain actions in person are acceptable. This desensitisation will also be combined with other media that they are consuming through film, both what’s seen on the big screen and in the privacy of their bedrooms (pornography), music and TV.

The only way to combat this problem is to start remembering that there is another human on the other side of the screen for a start, remembering what is and isn’t correct in social etiquette but ultimately, get back to meeting in person and relearning those etiquettes lost. I feel the other suggestions are merely ways of mitigating or dampening the damages but won’t be as effective as just leaving the online world a lot more.

Ego Boost

When you’re getting matches and messages, you’re going to feel good about it. It will help improve your feeling of acceptance in the world. Within your physiology, various hormones will be released to make you feel good, increase your confidence levels thus your perceived hierarchy placement and drive to continue with the behaviour that you’re currently engaging in.

However a danger of theses types of interactions from dating apps and this sense of acceptance without anything to compare to may give an individual a sense of inflated position in a social hierarchy, bringing about a sense of entitlement about their standing within a social structure which may be higher than what it actually is, based upon all the other factors that contribute to it. When this is brought into the real world, this could bring about a level of arrogance and potentially narcissism when they come into contact with other people. This discrepancy between the virtual and real worlds could lead to a lot of frustration, confusion and friction to those real world connections, causing them to be lost for one reason or another.

The almost transactional way of using these applications can leave a person potentially in the position of thinking that another human being is only there to facilitate their own acceptance within themselves, which maybe masking something that they feel insecure about. This may leave them with a distorted concept of what human to human interaction is really about. This is something that they may then end up translating into a real world scenario whereby rather than trying to build real connections, all they wish to do is gain validation from the attention that they receive and this will continue to seek this. In turn, it will be driving them to keep perpetuating this based upon a distorted reality of that beauty is everything and is how a person drives success. Ultimately, this will distill down to lack and loss of connection.

Another thing that this ego boost may drive is the appetite to hide who they truly are whether this be through editing of pictures, manipulation of lights and filters, lying about who they are within their profiles or even using a completely different persons set of pictures. The need for acceptance and that gratification from it can drive people to do drastic things which brings me onto my next negative of dating applications: catfishing.

Catfishing

So much of a problem that they managed to make a TV show out of this one! It’s likely you’re in the minority if you don’t but for those that don’t know what “catfishing” is, it is when an individual lies about who they are, whether this be through the use of photographs or their personality and life completely. This happens to varying degrees however it’s a valid problem faced by those on dating applications, both those who conduct it and those that fall victim to it.

The reasons behind doing this and to the extent that people will do it will vary from situation to situation but they all have the same desire: to provide a cover for who they truly are as an individual so they can leverage this to gain whatever it maybe that they are seeking. The way that this will manifest though can come in a variety of ways and as the technology that is available for people to do this improves, they temptations and results increase too. Here are just a few ways of people bring about an improved picture of who they are:

Use of filters, lighting or manipulating angles
Exaggerating their achievements and status as a person
Use of someone else’s pictures
Completely faking who they are as someone else both in pictures and personality

The end damage of this behaviour is something that has to be faced by both parties too. For those that are conducting the catfishing, they are reinforcing a behaviour of them hiding who they are as a person and being ashamed of who that person is so using various methods to enhance to fake who they are. This could also be simply to receive an ego boost they weren’t getting by being themselves. The damage for the person that falls victim of this is that they could end up with severe trust issues and scepticism of who they are meeting if they find out someone is catfishing them, either online or should it come to be in person.

Of course, the best way to combat this problem is for people to get offline again! OK, in person you there are still ways to manipulate who you are as a person but the leverage is a lot less and the chances of being fooled reduce significantly too.

Lack of Social Development

I mentioned this partially during the part about lack of connection. Use of these applications is only perpetuating our “social interactions” (if you could call them that) getting poorer and poorer as we rely upon their use.

Being able to communicate with another human being is certainly skill and this is evident from struggles children can have if they are not well socialised during their formative years. This skill not only requires words to be transferred from one person to another, you need emotion, voice tone, body language, proximity to one another, touch. You have to learn social cues, be able to garner when you interject your points into a conversation and be able to listen to another person actively, taking on their points rather than simply just replying to what they said or make a point that you feel that you need to.

Unfortunately, as we have moved more and more to the devices that surround us, that I wrote this blog on or that you’re reading it on, these skills have been lost and with that, the rise of faux social connection that we feel that we are getting through these devices. This leaves us with the motivation for us to actually go out there and see another human in person diminishing.

Alongside this, we have the simple fact that we are seeing anxiety skyrocket in the younger generations. This is being driven by many things but whatever the catalyst is, it’s leaving people in a position whereby they have too much anxiety to speak to people in person because they don’t know how to do it. This leaves them relying upon applications to be able to have these interactions, training them to only be able to have conversations in the virtual world. However, this won’t meet their social needs and help them further lose the skill of conversing in person and with that, the closed loop cycle will continue, spiralling down.

So with that in mind for just for simple interactions in a day to day setting, putting the added layer of flirtation, lust and love, this makes the whole process even more complicated for individuals who’ve not got the basics nailed down. This leaves them open to a world of problems, further sending them higher and higher on the anxiety levels and increasing their likelihood to hide behind a screen and perpetuating all of the issues highlighted in this blog.

One final point concerning the loss of social development is the fact that not only have people lost the ability to approach somebody else with confidence, people don’t know how to handle someone approaching them. It seems weird, it’s no longer natural and it very easily can be misconstrued or claimed to be something else. This only feeds into the problem with the applications and how we have forgotten to do things properly.

Where Should Things Go

Don’t worry, it’s not all doom and gloom in this blog. I always try and bring a bright side to things, bring some positivity and a way ahead for us all to take to help us return to what makes us healthier, happier and better functioning humans for both ourselves and those around us. Yes, I may have highlighted a fair few negatives to the use of dating apps but hope is not lost! There is a way to bring back the true nature of human interaction when you’re seeking out a partner, allowing you to connect with people in a purer way.

My aim is to list a few incremental steps and methods that you can incorporate into your life to allow you start having a more positive relationship with yourself, the applications and technology you use in the world, and noting the main topic of this blog, those that come into your life either in a romantic way or with the friendships you already have or build around you.

Don’t rush into anything – With the prevalence of seeing other people hitting certain life milestones via our media streams, it’s very easy to get caught up in it all and think that you need to catch up. With this, people may feel they need to accelerate the process of meeting someone and rush into things. With people thinking they have less and less time, they look for efficiency and expediency. There’s no need. Take things are your own pace or else you’ll end up in a situation which isn’t ideal for you and what you’re looking for in life.
Reduction in the amount of time you use on dating applications – There are a variety of ways that you can do this through timers on your phone that stop your extended use, correct scheduling of your time or simple willpower to put the phone down. This will help either slow the progression of the negatives around these applications and potentially allow you to start “recovering” from them, making you more human again.
Normalise in person human interaction – A lot of people live in their phones, headphones and other distractions to stop them from having to have human interactions with strangers. It’s an interesting thing; giving up real human interaction with someone for a faux one through your phone. Putting down the phone and/or taking off the headphones will allow you to more likely have an experience with someone in person and you never know where it could lead. Just think how good you’ll feel after getting over that initial fear and you get that feel good feeling from that positive human interaction? When you’re conscious of it, you’ll notice how good it can make you feel and motivate you to do it more often.
Ditch the applications altogether – A big step for some but a worthwhile one in so many ways. Firstly, getting rid of the safety net will leave you with only one option when it comes to meeting people. Secondly, it will give you more time for healthier and more worthwhile habits or connections, hopefully in the real world this time!

Got this far? Well, thanks for reading this blog and I hope that you found it a useful to reflect on your current dating situation and the habits that surround the actions that you or others around you take. Maybe you have read this blog and though aren’t in the dating scene at the moment, you may have a friend or friends that are and this could be a useful blog for them to read before they continue as they are.

If you enjoyed the read, then be sure to check out my other content on the blog by using the recommended links found around the blog or checking out the categories at the top of the page to link you to other pieces that I’ve written. Of course though, you’re going to want to know about the blogs that I post in the future, right? The best way to see when they are posted is by following me at the social media links below if you don’t already and you’ll be informed as soon as the next post is published!