Relationship coach Radhika Mohta conducted a survey on Instagram and found some interesting results. “Do you meet someone a) on a dating app, b) at a singles mixer, c) at a hobby class, or d) through friends and family?” asked on the platform. “Out of 42 votes, 28 votes were for hobby classes, 8 votes were for friends and family, 5 votes were for fellow singles, and only 1 vote was for dating apps,” the Bangalore-based matchmaker said on FE. told. “Everyone wants a natural encounter and a cute love story,” she jokes.
Online dating has been around for a while, but the launch of Tinder in 2012 revolutionized the field, especially with the “swipe” feature now built into the dating app experience. The app was so successful that within a year of its launch, it processed 350 million swipes per day, and the following year the number increased to 1 billion. Other apps followed suit, seeking a piece of the dating app pie. Bumble has carved out a niche for itself with its women-first approach, Hinge and Aisle are said to be designed for serious love, and Raya's appeal lies in its exclusivity.
There are approximately 381 million dating app users worldwide. And there are stories of people finding “the right fit” with these apps. So far, so good.
But amidst the big numbers, a small poll conducted by Motor paints a different picture. Do people swipe left on dating apps to support IRL, or 'in real life'?
Interestingly, even online dating providers are increasingly taking IRL efforts. Last year, Tinder hosted dating events in the US as part of its Singles Summer series. Similarly, Bumble hosts his Bumble IRL, and Hinge last year announced his $1 million fund to mobilize Gen Z to increase direct connections in their lives. Additionally, breadcrumbs, ghosting, catfishing, scams, and even crimes are occurring on the app, causing great fear and alarm.
love, lies and fatigue
At the suggestion of a friend, 26-year-old Mumbai-based engineer Parul Dalmia (name changed on request) joined a dating app in search of connections. “It was a good start for me,” she said, recounting how she struck up a relationship with a man over their shared interest in fitness. “But all of a sudden it turned into ghosting,” Parul said, which she said confused her a bit. She had taken a break from online dating, but was so blown away by her experience that she reinstalled the app. “You end up receiving a ton of requests that make the e-commerce experience feel like you're looking at a product rather than a real person. The temptation is to meet someone better each time. , swiping left and right all the time made it a pointless experience. And then there were stages of conversation and you ended up having the same conversations and it started to cause fatigue,” she says, adding that the tradition started to get tiring. She added that she has stopped online dating for now, wanting something personal and natural.
While Dalmia had plenty of options, it was the opposite for 29-year-old Kolkata-based Rohit Gupta (name changed on request). “I've swiped right on so many women and so few matches,” he says.
One comment from a Bangalore-based woman in her 30s in response to Mr. Mota's Instagram survey was, “Dating apps are full of liars and confused people. Sorry to be so harsh, but… Many of my friends and I had the same experience.”
“Dating apps can be a tedious process, which can cause great fatigue,” says relationship coach Simran Mangaharam. “We already consume so much online, but this is another thing we need to do,” she says, noting that she's seeing more men and women stop using apps. She added that there is. “Especially people who are looking for a serious relationship don't want to use apps,” she added.
Numbers are a sign of trouble
The user experience seems to be reflected in the numbers as well. Match Group and Bumble, which own apps like Tinder, Hinge, and OkCupid, control much of the market.
During an earnings call on January 31, Match Group CEO Bernard Kim told analysts that the company this year has adopted a “fast-fail mentality, a strategy that prioritizes rapid experimentation and testing.” “Tinder will attract more paying users through marketing and marketing,” he said, adding that Tinder will attract more paying users through marketing. Introducing new features. He said Tinder will overhaul its swipe feature in a move to encourage more users to authenticate and make it more secure.
Earlier this year, Bumble announced plans to lay off a third of its employees in the first half of 2024. In addition, the company also lowered its revenue forecast for the first quarter. The company's CEO, Lydiaan Jones, told analysts earlier this year that it would be revamped to better appeal to users, especially young people.
Breadcrumbs, ghosting, cookie discomfort, etc.
A situationship is a semi-relationship that is difficult to define. Ghosting is when a person suddenly ends communication without any explanation. Breadcrumbing is just pretending to be interested in someone. Cookie jarring is when you keep one person as a backup while you focus on yourself. Give energy to someone else.
These can happen in traditional dating, but in the age of online dating, being assigned quirky names has become a trend. Although these can have a negative impact on a person's mental health,
When 28-year-old Dushyant Sharma met 27-year-old Priya Seth on Tinder, he had no doubts. After talking on the app, the two decided to meet. However, this so-called relationship that began in 2018 was built on lies and ended in disaster. It turned out that Sharma was already married and had lied about his identity by posing as a wealthy businessman from Delhi. Meanwhile, Seth was only coming for her money and was planning to kidnap her Sharma and rob her of her money, but that's exactly what happened the moment she entered her house. However, she, along with her accomplice, soon realized that she was not as wealthy as Sharma pretended to be, and when her family would not pay her ransom, she murdered Sharma.
While this was a tragic end to the story, in another case, a Delhi-based HR professional defrauded a man of around Rs 100 crore in just three months after meeting him on Bumble was arrested as. It's straight out of the Tinder Swindler playbook, except it's run through Bumble instead of Tinder, and by women instead of men.
In yet another case involving an Indian-American woman living in the US, a whopping $450,000 (approximately Rs. 3.6 crore) of her savings was siphoned off. Adding to her dismay, the person she was communicating with on Hinge who convinced her to invest and later caused her losses revealed that her savings were not real people but were generated by an AI. That is to say. “One of my clients was also scammed on a dating app and she was very ashamed of herself,” says Mangaharam.
A study by McAfee found that 39% of Indian potential love interests met online are scammers. Not only that, but 77% of the 1,000 respondents said they had come across a fake AI-generated profile of a girlfriend on a dating app.
While Mangaharam encourages her clients to try dating apps and go on dates to get to know themselves, she says, “I'm scared because I don't know who I'm going to meet.'' talk about She says, “I've met people with necrophilia.” Another problem, she says, is that married people who aren't looking for a serious relationship are on the app, and people who are looking for a serious relationship are joining the app. For some, that would be ruinous.
“One of my clients, who lives in Mumbai, met a man on a dating app. After interacting online for a while, they decided to meet up. But just before she was about to leave, he called her and said, , I said, 'Hey, I just wanted you to know that I'm married,'” she added.
love gamification
On Valentine's Day earlier this year, six people filed a lawsuit against Match Group in the US alleging the app used game-like tactics and thus encouraged addictive behavior, which the company called “ridiculous.” He claimed to have denied it.
However, the mechanism by which gamification in dating apps releases the feel-good hormones dopamine and serotonin in the brain, elevating mood, is attracting attention. This is similar to the feeling you get after hearing a notification pop on social media, leading to more interactions on the platform.
“One of my clients, a man in his mid-twenties who graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and works at a startup in Bangalore, said to me, “Radhika, at one point I just wanted to see… “I was pulling out my phone 50 times a day for dating app notifications,” Morta said.
A study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University also found that dating apps' algorithms have a popularity bias and are more likely to suggest popular and attractive users than others.
all is well?
Nevertheless, Match Group CEO Bernard Kim has written in a media article about how difficult dating was before the advent of dating apps, and how stories of bad dates I wrote about how it can help you increase your social media followers. Negative because it is the loudest. “Shared houses, marriage vows, and family expansion as a result of dating apps are less widespread, but just as prevalent,” he wrote in an op-ed for the news website.
“In fact, even though data conclusively shows that dating apps are working for more people than ever before, are dating anecdotes in any way representative of the views of an entire generation? “It's disconcerting to see it presented like this, or like it's a broken system,” he added.
Kim says apps are “working” for more people than ever before, but analysis by app intelligence provider data.ai shows that as of January of this year, dating app downloads were higher than last year. The increase was only 1.9% compared to the previous year. Not only that, but Kim's Match Group announced in its fourth-quarter earnings report in January that paying customers were down 5% year over year.
However, despite these problems, people still believe that technology is not all bad. “In a country like India,
The bottom line is to be cautious, proactive, and avoid leaving eggs in the dating app basket.