“So many people don’t talk on the apps anymore. I feel like people match and then it’s like, nothing ever comes of it.”
“I feel like no one meets at bars anymore.”
”No one ever talks anymore.”
These were the general responses from women in a street interview with Sydney women conducted by dating app Amata, when asked “what girls really think about dating in Sydney.”
We’re living in a time where it is just as normal to meet our next potential partner on a tiny screen as it is to meet them in line at a coffee shop, in a bar, or at a concert. In the digital age, dating apps are the new ‘meetcute’. The popularity of dating apps, particularly for Gen Z, has seen a significant increase since COVID-19 lockdowns, where face-to face social interactions were already limited. So naturally, how else were we supposed to meet people?
It breeds the question, are there long term implications to this augmented form of ‘partner seeking’?
Are we in a generational limbo where finding people has become too instantaneous?
According to a Time Magazine interview with the founders of Tinder, Sean Rad and Justin Mateen, apps like these were designed to take the ‘stress out of dating’ by having a “game-like” experience, requiring less time and emotional investment to play.
The app designers initially aimed to use compatibility algorithms based on hobbies, age range, distance, and physical appearances. Users can express themselves in these same categories through individually curated profiles. An Informit study conducted by sociologists from Sydney‘s top universities reveals that “ease of use and suitability for modern lifestyles” were the main benefits of dating apps. One participant even revealed that “matches are a form of validation regarding desirability”.
Dating apps are technically digitized matchmaking services; they were only ever supposed to be a stepping stone for singles to officially be off the market, as advertised by one of the leading platforms Hinge, whose slogan claims to be “the dating app for people who want to get off dating apps”.
Nowadays, people are using it as a form of passing time. The vulnerable early stages of romance are being substituted with digital interactions, creating a false sense of intimacy with virtual strangers. A dopamine hit with no real desire to commit to anybody. But has this become the underlying issue for everyone in the dating pool? Is over-accessibility suppressing our desires?
Author Catherine Shannon suggests “our phones are making us less sexy” — “you don’t have to look good in person when you look good on instagram.”
Now, our generation is currently living in an epidemic of loneliness. Social interactions are diminishing, dating culture and the surrounding etiquette is shifting. With that comes the consequent loneliness many singles share, enough so to envy friends in successful relationships. Having a healthy relationship is such a rarity it’s almost a status symbol, a victory in the arena of modern dating. A dating stasis.
If dating apps are used for their proper function of pairing willing single participants together offline, then they are succeeding. But with them impeding on our real world interactions, we might be in a potential dating recession.
It’s dystopian. It’s unnatural. It’s emotionally numbing. Are you enjoying being in a dating limbo?
