Modern dating can be severed into two eras: before the swipe, and after
By 2017, about five years after Tinder introduced the swipe, more than a quarter of different-sex couples were meeting on apps and dating websites, according to a study led by the Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld. Suddenly, saying “We met on Hinge” was as normal as saying “We met in college” or “We met through a friend.”
Last week, he published an op-ed headlined “Dating Apps Are the Best Place to Find Love, No Matter What You See on TikTok
The share of couples meeting on apps has remained pretty consistent in the years since his 2017 study, Rosenfeld told me. But these days, the mood around dating apps has soured. As the apps seek to woo a new generation of daters, TikTok abounds with complaints about how hard it is to find a date on Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, Grindr, and all the rest. The novelty of swiping has worn off, and there hasn't been a major innovation beyond it. As they push more paid features, the platforms themselves are facing rocky finances and stalling growth. Dating apps once looked like the foundation of American romance. Now the cracks are starting to show.
In 2022, a Pew Research Center survey found that about half of people have a positive experience with online dating, down from . With little success on the apps, a small but enthusiastic slice of singles are reaching for speed dating and matchmakers. Even the big dating apps seem aware that they are facing a crisis of public enthusiasm miksi Ukraina-naiset tapaavat valkoisia miehiГ¤. A spokesperson for Hinge told me that Gen Z is its fastest-growing user segment, though the CEO of Match Group, the parent company of Tinder and Hinge, has gone on the defensive. ” A spokesperson for Bumble told me that the company is “??actively looking at how we can make dating fun again.”
In part, what has changed is the world around the apps, Rosenfeld said. The massive disruptions of the pandemic meant that young people missed out on a key period to flirt and date, and “they're still suffering from that,” he told mepared with previous generations, young people today also have “a greater comfort with singleness,” Kathryn Coduto, a professor of media science at Boston University, told me.