Swipe, sex and next
As the app celebrates its birthday this year, we look at how mobile dating has (and hasn’t) changed our love lives.
Five years of Tinder
sometimes it’s hard to remember how single people met each other before apps like Tinder. Did we go to bars? Just sleep with our friends when we accidentally lingered too long at a house party? It’s amazing how quickly we’ve adapted to swiping through thousands of potential partners while half-watching reruns of Friends. And even though we’ve never met a woman who didn’t have complicated feelings about dating apps, there’s very little comprehensive research on the wider effects of mobile dating. So GLAMOUR conducted our own survey of 1 000 women and talked to experts to find out whether apps have really changed how we date. The answer is yes, and in more profound ways than we realised. Take a look.
We aren’t really looking to ‘date’, per se
Asking for a little help finding a partner is hardly new – where would Patti Stanger of The Millionaire Matchmaker fame be if people didn’t need expert advice? What Tinder changed (racking up 1.4 billion swipes a day, more than any other platform) was that it never actually said it was a dating app. “It killed the stigma of online dating by not being about online dating,” says Steve Dean, founder of a consulting company for individual online daters and dating sites.
Before Tinder, dating sites specialised based on a desired level of commitment – casual hook-up, an actual relationship, marriage. But the app caught on because it made it OK to be unsure about exactly what you were seeking.
“Tinder says, ‘Do whatever the hell you want; we’re just going to show you people who are nearby and likely to start talking to you,’” says Dean. In that way, it mimics how people meet in real life. Tinder’s lack of an endgame fosters a culture in which a woman can be adventurous in any way she chooses. If you discover through Tinder that – oh, snap! – you’re actually a ‘unicorn’ and only want to have sex with couples (it’s a thing alright), you can go to a more specialised app to meet them. Or if you just want a friend (straight up, no nude pics), Bumble BFF may be for you. And you can always sign up for Okcupid or eharmony if you’re hoping for a relationship. It can work: more than 30% of women who use apps in our survey said they found a serious partner on them; 12% married their match.
We’re becoming super efficient
Of course, the number-one change the apps have brought is the ability to access millions of single people at warp speed, wherever we are. The upside of these instant options is that we waste less time on relationships that go nowhere and we’re less likely to settle. We can set up five dates in a night if we want (though, frankly, that sounds exhausting), which means we’re increasing the odds that we meet the right person by playing it like a numbers game.
The downside to all that efficiency? It kind of is a numbers game. “It becomes like an addiction to novelty without substance,” says Dean. “When you get a match with someone, it literally gives you a boost of dopamine, and you think, ‘There’s no cost to continuing to play.’ The dating apps know this, and they are exploiting our reward pathways to make sure that we’re always coming back.” For example, two options show up when you get a Tinder match, one for talking to the person you matched with – intimidating! – and one to continue swiping – low-commitment!
Working things out? Not a huge priority
While this insane efficiency can get us more dates, some experts worry that it’s not making us better daters. Let’s put it this way: if dating is like fishing off the side of a ship, then mobile dating is like fishing from a glass-bottomed boat. Since you’re now keenly aware of how many fish are swimming around at a given time, why wouldn’t you (or the person you’re dating) try casting for more than one? And what do you do when you catch something? You’re less likely to invest the energy working through problems when there are all those other, ahem, fish in the sea.
We’re getting good at getting dumped
Remember that episode of Sex and the City in which Jack Berger (Ron Livingston) breaks up with Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) via a Post-it note? At the time he was a raging jerk, but in today’s dating world that seems downright chivalrous. Now you could have a perfectly good date and then the person just disappears. But ironically, experts suggest all that ghosting could
“Millennials are using sex as an interview tool and even a courtship tool to jump-start a relationship.” – Dr Helen Fisher
actually be making us stronger. “When you’re afraid of spiders and you expose yourself to spiders, they have less meaning for you after a while,” says therapist Lia Avellino. “[Being ghosted] could be building up resilience and helping us let go more easily.” All those breakups and blow-offs? They’re like exposure therapy, but for rejection.
Enter the ‘sex interview’
Don’t worry. It isn’t as sketchy as it sounds. This year match.com’s annual survey of 5 500 men and women asked participants whether they’d ever had sex before a first date, and 48% of them said yes. Not to be confused with hooking up, these people had gone to bed together before even going to the bar together.
It’s a phenomenon Dr Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist and the site’s chief scientific adviser, calls the ‘sex interview’. “A lot of young people now don’t want to spend time going out with somebody unless they get to know them physically first,” she says. “You can learn a lot about people between the sheets. Are they kind? Can they listen? Do they have a sense of humour? Millennials are using sex as an interview tool and even a courtship tool to jump-start a relationship.” (And as long as you’re safe, it’s a pretty fun way to save time.)
Of course, dating will always be as complicated as a swipe is simple. But apps have “definitely created more space for women to sprawl out and explore,” says Lia. And knowing what we want can make us happier when we do find a partner – or partners, if that’s what you’re into.