Apps ditched in favour of finding love the old-fashioned way

Finding love can be just a matter of “swipe right” these days but Malaysia’s Gen Y-ers are still old-fashioned romantics.

Even as dating apps become more common, a survey showed that the technology-obsessed Gen-Y in Malaysia prefer to meet their love interests the traditional way – offline.

A mere 7% of youths here believe that Tinder is the most conducive way to meet someone new, which is below the global average of 12%.

This is despite each using an average of one dating app, with Tinder being named as the top platform.

The findings emerged from the Truth About Youth survey, conducted by McCann Truth Central of McCann Worldgroup.

The poll gathered the responses of 11,000 youths aged between 16 and 30 across 18 countries. Of the total, 2,000 were from Malaysia.

Some dating app users agreed that they would rather find love through conventional means.

“But who knows? I may end up having a happy Tinder-ella story,” said a doctor, who wishes to be known only as Elizabeth, 28.

She conceded that meeting someone face-to-face was a better way to gauge a potential partner.

Looking for love, online or offline, takes a lot of courage. The stakes are higher for online dating because you really put yourself out there.

While it was fun in the beginning, a master’s degree student known only as Kil said he grew tired of online dating because he felt most users judged others by their appearance.

“If you don’t like their face, just swipe left and they won’t appear on your screen again.

“So it is very easy to dismiss someone because of their looks,” said the 24-year-old.

McCann Erickson planning director Nura Yusof said the findings indicated that Malaysian Gen Y-ers were more “conservative” than their peers abroad.

“They still believe in the romantic or traditional way of meeting new people, be it through sweet seren- dipity, meeting someone at a social event, or having a school crush.

“It is good that our young people place importance in face-to-face interactions,” she said.

Most or 69% found it unacceptable to regularly “hook up” with strangers they meet on dating apps, based on the poll findings.

Some 53% also do not trust the people they find online.

And the youths are right to be cautious, as authorities have received reports of scammers and

incidents of cyber blackmail and cyberstalking on dating apps.

When contacted, CyberSecurity Malaysia chief executive officer Datuk Dr Amirudin Abdul Wahab cautioned that there were 25 security incidents involving dating apps in Malaysia in the past five years.

Such digital crime cases were reported to the agency’s help centre, Cyber999.

“Some victims were forced to deactivate all social media accounts because of cyberstalkers. We also advised the victims to make a police report,” he said.

Dr Amirudin warned that some dating apps had also leaked Facebook identities, location data and pictures.

“Users are advised to limit the information they share such as location and phone numbers.

“They should also avoid logging into dating apps by using their social media accounts. Instead, create a new account for it,” he said.