FIVE REASONS WHY DATING APPS ARE UNDERMINING OUR CHANCES FOR HAPPINESS IN ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS
Dating apps — Tinder and the like — may be changing the way we experience romance and reducing our chances of being happy in romantic relationships.
It is essential to clarify that I do not intend to raise the hypothesis that such applications invariably fail in their objective of seeking the “great love of your life” (many people have), nor that they can not be very useful if you have other objectives in mind, such as to make friends, expand your worldview by keeping in touch with people outside your circle of friends and acquaintances, or even finding a nice companion for sightseeing in an unknown city. I’ve had surprisingly wonderful moments empowered by Tinder: I have built lasting bonds of friendship and exchanged valuable academic information (believe it or not); I was introduced to songs, movies, and books I would probably not know otherwise. I connected with people in a true (maybe old-fashioned) sense.
However, if we narrow the application’s purpose — restricting it to the goal of finding a romantic relationship — its use may be counterproductive. At least this is what growing research in the areas of Experimental Psychology and Social Psychology has been telling us.
1. Dating apps — such as Tinder — tend to subvert the logic that should govern human relationships [especially romantic ones]
When we meet someone, we are ideally guided by the logic of engagement, commitment, the pursuit of kinship, and connection. To interact with someone means to be detached from yourself — even for a few moments — and be present in the otherness of others. Human bonds have endless nuances that are difficult to capture — gestures, smells, movements, expressions.
Whereas on dating apps, we are “on display,” chosen by an algorithm — from opaque criteria — and presented to others in a menu of countless options. These interfaces are designed in such a way that we engage in an “assessment mode.” We are now scrutinized as commodities: evaluated and [always] compared to the other options on display. And what seems to be worse, our decisions become predominantly oriented and mediated by a very superficial aspect of human interactions — other people’s appearances.
In this context, physical features end up overshadowing other variables that seem to be decisive in defining success in a relationship: intelligence, humor, empathy, aligned worldviews and interests, companionship, enthusiasm for life, and, above all, that intangible quality we identify as “chemistry.”
Who has never felt a growing attraction when getting to know someone? Who has never watched that one person — who at first did not fit your list of preferences — suddenly becoming irrevocably irresistible? In love, our actions are more revealing of what attracts us than our mental checklists about the perfect match.
2. Potential for addiction
Dating apps are designed to keep us hooked. These applications compete for our attention and create addiction with the usual tricks: notifications, email alerts, and interfaces that dress them up in an entertainment cloak.
On Tinder, for example, each new match stimulates the production in the brain of a substance called dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is activated when we experience novelty and, by acting on the limbic system, provides feelings of pleasure. For this reason, mechanically, we tend to be driven by the incessant search for novelty. The great advantage, therefore, of the interface of applications such as Tinder — compared to those old dating sites — is to transform “dating” into a sport/game, which can permeate several activities in our day. Who has never stopped to “match” at work at lunchtime or while waiting in line at the supermarket?
3. The paradox of choice
This commoditization of people and the huge amount of options can make it harder to choose and, once we decide, increase the chances of dissatisfaction as we tend to be haunted by comparison with potential better choices.
4. Dating-app fatigue
Can you imagine if you met 90 people in a bar but only exchanged phone numbers with one? This relentless search for partners generates what technology researchers have coined as online dating-app fatigue. Dating-app fatigue points to a possible tendency to prioritize quantity over quality and depth in new relationships. In other words, the notion of efficiency starts to guide decisions in our romantic lives.
As for my personal experience on Tinder, it was permeated by a growing sense of discomfort. After some time reflecting upon the possible origins of this discomfort, I found in a comparison with speed-dating a great way to explain my anguish. Speed-dating is similar to Tinder: when you give a “match,” it’s like the moment when a new person sits in front of you in speed-dating. Soon and ungracefully, you and your new date exchange a few words, but the speed and layout of the whole set up don’t even scratch the surface of who both of you are.
Then, a little bell rings and another person sits in front of you. And the whole experience goes on for, let’s say, 50 times. At the end of the speed-dating session you can even pass your phone or go out with that person you were most attracted to or with whom you seemed to have established a connection, but still there is a great chance that you will simply get lost in the middle of the lack of focus on communication and amidst the illusion of countless options.
5. We forget that love can be found in the outstanding hidden behind the ordinaryIt is common with dating apps to come across people searching for the extraordinary in the very first communication, then otherwise discarding their candidates. There were a lot of people who have said to me “surprise me” as if I were some kind of entertainer whose job was to change their ordinary lives forever.
By doing so, they forget that so often love arises from subtleties: it is that little something that vibrates in the middle of your routine and to which you turned simply because you were paying enough attention.
In the end, you must be cautious because it is hard to hear the sound of a heartbeat amidst the endless noise of digital interactions.
* This text was written before the COVID-19 pandemic. Maybe, these days, dating-apps could be a more useful tool. Maybe not. What do you think?
