College students =/= young people
even looking at just 18-24 it's like 1/3 of them and not a representative sample, and grad students are an even tinier group of mostly mid-late 20s
College provides (usually) a built in community and likely even a walkable neighborhood, and many opportunities to meet people that the general working public often lack. Didn't stop apps from becoming popular on campuses, but I feel like it was always destined to be a fad in that context, because the apps suck so much
Also what exactly is the control group here? How different is 79% from that of other demographics?
I'm in a different age cohort, and I would be very surprised if more than 1 in 5 of my friends were using dating apps as often as once a month.
so much
"News" sites should stop trying to do statistics or anything resembling science communication, they're dogshit at it
At least some of them will have historical data to compare, but this doesn't even have that
Presumably most people in relationships aren't on dating apps, and a lot of people are in relationships... it doesn't even limit this to single people lmao
you'd think that but there was a post a while back where the only reasonable conclusions were that bros have shady standards of "in a relationship" or everybody under 30 is way way more gay than anyone thought because "maybe women tend to date older men" didn't explain how big the gender relationship gap was.
That tracks, it's not neccesarily just shady Bros, ime the poly scene skews femme and bi.
I met my partner the old fashioned way: Chinese language classes where we got to screen all of our potential romance partners with hard hitting questions like "do you prefer apples or watermelon" and "do you use the telephone or email to talk to your mother?"
The tone of this comment is making me think these aren't normal first date questions.
That seems like a return to the norm. 21% is a lot of people to use what pre-Tinder was an old person activity. When I was young (
) using a dating app when you're like under 30 was considered weird. Imo when you're young and actively socializing constantly it doesn't make much sense to use an app for dating.Imo when you're young and actively socializing constantly it doesn't make much sense to use an app for dating.
haha yeah, I'm definitely actively socializing...
True. I've never really used those apps. Well the one I did use one time I ended up having a one night stand which was a first for me and not my intention. I mean, I wanted to have sex, and did, but I wasn't expecting it if that makes sense.
Anyway, the next morning I had to do my one and only "well... I gotta go to work... so..." speech to the young woman. Clearly I fucked up something about how I said it, or didn't know what she wanted, and in any case even though that was well over 10 years ago I still roll that memory through my "cringe bank" in my mind. I legitimately felt bad. I still do.
Long way of saying the best relationship(s) I had, which went from friendship, to bf/gf and, people never believe this, but back to a friendship (after years of separation, granted) began offline, from chance encounters, and a mutual realization that we found each other attractive.
I've viewed, and apparently used them this way myself by accident, those apps as like "I want to bang. If we both swipe the thing we agree to probably bang." Which is fine. But it's not for me.
TLDR: I accidentally batted 100 with dating apps and retired early.
I'm talking out my ass here but it doesn't feel to me like young people have returned to socializing and finding dates mostly in-person. Or at least, it doesn't feel like the amount of IRL fraternizing going on has correspondingly increased to match the headline stat. Though the group of uni students is relatively small and self-selecting so maybe
Well, yeah, that's what I thought (I'm 378 years old) but I'm surprised Gen Z agree with you and me
I have thus far managed to avoid the hell of the dating app and I hope to never, ever, have to resort to it. it does help that as a communist I am so very very attractive.
I remember the slightly gooder old days when OKCupid was the dominant dating "app" (because it was a website). You answered a ton of survey questsions ranging from serious philosophical and political question to silly personal preferences and weighed how important they were to you, then the website matched you with people who had similar values. You could write a big complicated profile if you wanted, upload some pictures. There were fun, silly quizes to take. It was actually designed to be user friendly and help you find people who had similar interests and values.
online dating doesn't have to be absolute bullshit. In theory it could work really well. We just have to, you know, kill capitalism.
https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.5964/ijpr.v3isupp2.78
Marriages resulting from the online matchmaking service were observed to have significantly higher scores for marital adjustment. We conclude that online matchmaking services based on predictive inference and proscribed selection can be observed to have a significant and meaningful impact on marital quality
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1222447110
marriages that began on-line, when compared with those that began through traditional off-line venues, were slightly less likely to result in a marital break-up (separation or divorce) and were associated with slightly higher marital satisfaction among those respondents who remained married.
I remember the slightly gooder old days when OKCupid was the dominant dating "app" (because it was a website). You answered a ton of survey questsions ranging from serious philosophical and political question to silly personal preferences and weighed how important they were to you, then the website matched you with people who had similar values. You could write a big complicated profile if you wanted, upload some pictures. There were fun, silly quizes to take. It was actually designed to be user friendly and help you find people who had similar interests and values.
That was my experience years and years ago.
I don't even know what changed from there but I know it's gotten worse since the site was bought and rebought by larger and larger techbro corporations after I left. Actually successfully dating isn't as profitable as keeping people around, and they learned that well.
They also published various funny/depressing statistics on their blog, worth a look if you're into that sort of thing
Apps are awful. It feels so shitty to like "shop" through people's profiles, it's dehumanizing. There is no real way to find like an actually relationship on those, doubly so if you're queer.
Young people in the best possible social environment they'll be in their entire lives with constant opportunity every single day to meet people exactly their age aren't using apps? What a surprise
Hanging out at dive bars alone has never been super good to me but I think I might have just been going to the wrong places (too many old creeps). Even at the shitty bar I was going to the other year I did meet one cool person, but I was so caught off guard it fizzled after chatting for a bit.
Idk. I've always felt like nobody ever taught me how to chat up strangers (and I honestly for a long time felt people my age just simply didn't do that anymore... now I'm not so sure), but otoh learning from my older family members would've probably just taught me to be a sex pest so I guess its for the best that I have to figure it out myself as an adult.
Nice!
No train service worth a damn where I am and I'm not about to go find a dive bar near the airport lol but yeah. I just don't love crowds is part of the problem. There are more young/not creepy people when the place is busy but packed bar karaoke just isn't my vibe especially not solo lol. There are some maybe-cooler places in a different part of town tbh, so maybe I'll go down that way eventually
I hate it, I didnt match with anyone and if I did, it was a spam bot. I ran more luck hanging out at a dive bar near the waterfront (took the train to it btw).
I'd kill to live somewhere that public transit is decent + some kind of third space where people who I find cool (and who would find me cool) just hang out randomly
Because they're awful. Dating apps were better when they were websites you could only access from a desktop computer. Okcupid pre 2014 was peak dating site. Even with all that aside, nothing will ever beat meeting people in person. Apps nowadays are better if you just want to sleep around. Probably also if you live in a big city.
I remember liking OKcupid solely for the million questions because once you answer enough of them, you can just quick peek at your absolute deal breakers and be like "oh god you're a chud, next." Unfortunately I also am criminally terrible at picking up flirting and subtlety so when a girl started talking about a local kink event, I just was like "oh that sounds neat, have fun." Had a girl once just outright say "I'm flirting with you" and I still didn't know what to do. I've since made my peace with never touching a dating app again because they're just awful.
I agree vintage OKC was the least bad option. Loads of text fields so ppl can show off just who they are - very helpful!
I'd probably be content with just "sleeping around", but I can't make a profile interesting enough for anyone to care about me. lol
Am I the only one here who's had relatively okayish experiences with dating apps. Im not exactly a
either.the most toxic relationship in my life was with someone I meet through college so idk if traditional dating is really what everyone makes it out to be.
im older and have been in a committed relationship for over 15 years so im not an authority here or anything but every relationship ive ever had came from a friendship first
i think people are starting to understand that love isnt always some magic "struck by lightning" thing but rather something that blooms from healthy relationships with all kinds of people
if you are sociable and chill you can befriend people and sometimes one of those friendships just levels up, or they set you up with someone because you are cool, or you do that for them this is how it has been done in so many cultures for all of human history if it aint broke dont fix it
im older and have been in a committed relationship for over 15 years so im not an authority here or anything but every relationship ive ever had came from a friendship first
i think people are starting to understand that love isnt always some magic "struck by lightning" thing but rather something that blooms from healthy relationships with all kinds of people
if you are sociable and chill you can befriend people and sometimes one of those friendships just levels up, or they set you up with someone because you are cool, or you do that for them this is how it has been done in so many cultures for all of human history if it aint broke dont fix it
A lot of contemporary people fixate on a deep memetic fear of "the friend zone" which simultaneously makes them dislike the idea of being friends with people they might theoretically want to have sex with and poisons the friendship in advance by embedding that assumption for where it must go.
its all the friendzone until its not
i was in a longterm relationship that started as a friendship, i confessed my feelings and got "friendzoned" i guess, but then i just chilled and stayed friends and didnt obsess or follow around the person like a pathetic puppy dog and continued to make more friends
eventually she grew feelings for me and we had an awesome young relationship that lasted for years we both lost our v-cards to each other and i wouldnt trade it despite it ending bitterly (long story)
either way, if she never developed feelings for me that would have been okay, too. we were friends. i wasn't just hanging around to fuck her.
in my mostly male and male-presenting friend group, it seems to be split 50/50 in terms of who's had an okay time on them and who finds them to be a barren hellscape, and it doesn't really seem to correspond 1:1 with conventional attractiveness either. I think my friends who got on them before they became even further enshittified tend to have a higher opinion of them. FWIW I became single this year after almost 9 years in a relationship and I'm firmly in the hellscape camp.
(Also don't let one bad experience scare you off IRL connection, I really do think it's something special when it works out)
I met my wife on a dating site before it was bought several times over and enshittified each time. I lucked out by way of timing where the techbros didn't yet refine and perfect the process of making the site retain users as its priority over actually helping people find other people.
Dating sites were actually pretty decent before tinder set ablaze to them all. I had a lot of success when i could just message anyone on the site and the second it became tinder it just stopped working.
Some of the most annoying takes I saw on Hexbear about that were "actually because people complained about online dating when it started, online dating is exactly as good and bad as it has always been dae le ancients complained about dae le youths"
It is worse and it sucks for those that use it now.
I imagine the scope of it makes things worse as well. Like when there are only a few compatible people in your area you'd just go fuck it and go on a few dates. When there are hundreds of dating "resumes" to sift through there's probably all sorts of emergent behaviour that's tough to account for. Hell, just the genetal idea of it gives me anxiety.
I got married before the "swipe" thing really took off.
I don't think I'd be able to handle it. It sounds obnoxious and dehumanizing.
The ones trying to do more traditional compatibility dating still have that aspect and it feels even more insane. There's one that targets more careerist types and I have a feeling everyone on there is just Patrick Bateman.
There's one that targets more careerist types
those types seem to be pretty common on most dating apps as it is. like even on Tinder which is supposed to be a hook-up app for the most part
ive had positive experience with dating apps! it was a fun and easy way to flirt and meet people and im grateful for the experience. i learned a lot about myself and im better off for it.
I also have had an alright experience. I used it almost entirely for meeting people, with the goal of getting off of it (the conversation) asap.
Nah, they changed my life and honestly i love them. I never would have met any of the people I'm dating currently without them
I don't know if I should be glad or not that people are dropping this hell app. To me, Tinder was always a horrible, horrible app, simply radioactive. A swiping session always felt to me like an equal amount of time spent chilling next to the Elephant's Foot in fucking Chernobyl.
I suppose some people knew better than me and were able to use Tinder in a way that did not corrode their sanity. Maybe people with more confidence and self-esteem. To me, though, it was always a horrible thing that did quite a number on my mental health.
I know that this is going to resemble an argument that the anti-science types make for how Big Pharma is suppressing the cure for cancer because a sick customer is a return customer but...
Dating apps are based on engagement. Engagement on a dating app is based on your being single (generally speaking) and feeling incapable of connecting with people outside of the app.
So you have this situation where punters use dating apps to connect with people and to find relationships and yet the design of the app exists in complete opposition to these aims as it requires that you stay single and to not connect with others.
With that in mind, the fact that your experience of dating apps was really negative and harmful shouldn't come as any surprise. You can look at it as if this is a reflection of some sort of personal deficit on your behalf but I'm not convinced tbh.
I think my experience of slot machines is similar to yours, and maybe as a metaphor this works well too, but I knew people who would enjoy playing slot machines. Or at least that's what they reported. I think I've played them twice in my life total, as in putting in a dollar and playing a couple of rounds and then walking away disaffected by the experience. (Disaffected in the true meaning of the word btw.)
Maybe it's because I'm autistic or something but I really hated the overstimulation, all the flashing lights and blaring sound and the background clamour. I couldn't understand how the game worked or the mechanics behind it and it left me feeling confused and uneasy. It was all frenetic and uncomfortable for me. If I stayed at it for more than a few minutes I'm sure it would have had some negative effects on me commensurate with how long I played it for. I suspect that slot machines are designed this way to make people on edge and kinda frantic to put them into a state which makes them susceptible to just one more game (and they are designed as elaborate and exquisitely refined Skinner boxes, of course.)
I don't think that there's something wrong with me personally that meant I had a negative experience with slot machines. I think they're weird, uncomfortable, exploitative machines. And I have a lot of sympathy for the people who enjoy them or who get addicted to them but I don't consider those people as having personal qualities that make them somehow better than I am for it.
Maybe there are few people who hit the jackpot with slot machines and another small group who truly enjoy them but I think they're few and far between.
Persistence is an admirable trait generally but persisting under conditions which are seriously harmful to your wellbeing is not. Maybe your experience of dating apps is a reflection of the fact that you're more aware of your own needs and you figured out that dating apps are bad for you, where someone who is more persistent would have continued to persevere despite the negative impacts on them?
Maybe your experience of dating apps is a reflection of the fact that you're more aware of your own needs and you figured out that dating apps are bad for you, where someone who is more persistent would have continued to persevere despite the negative impacts on them?
I think this makes sense. What makes me feel particularly bad about Tinder is how you were treated as a huge weirdo (at least a couple years back, but still a bit now) if you were not actively swiping away, trying to get laid. I suppose this is a general feeling that I have, as someone with very low libido and who no longer drinks. If you're not drinking and/or fucking, you're doing things wrong.
This is why I said I didn't know whether or not I should be glad that the popularity of Tinder is fading. For me, that's one less expectation that other people put on me (or maybe that's just my own twisted perception). For others, it's probably the end of something that actually brought them positive, meaningful relationships - I have two friends who have married their Tinder dates.
Based gen Z. We're with the boomers on this one.
I'm headed back to college to become employable, and thank god that so many zoomers decided to find partners/friends the old fashioned way rather than an algorithm.
I gave up on dating apps. I'm getting PreP and getting on Grindr. People who look for hookups are magnitudes better behaved, nicer and more caring than anyone Ive ever interacted with on dating apps.
swipe swipe swipe swipe
