Swipe Left or Swipe Right
A closer look at dating app culture
Graphic by Christina Hara
I remember hearing ads about different dating apps and wondering why anyone would ever want to meet someone that way. I thought it sounded dangerous and boring but ultimately I thought it sounded ingenuine. But, that was my seventh-grade brain – one that had never even flirted with someone yet.
Generally, it seems that people have substanceless interactions on dating apps; whether that be my own, friends’, or people on TikTok’s, the interactions ultimately lead nowhere. On occasion, there is a couple who met on a dating app and end up working out, which always gets surprised reactions because of the stigma surrounding online dating.
Many of my friends and I have had our own experiences with dating apps since graduating high school. My friends Evan Gee, Kori Miyamoto, Charlotte Caistor, and Juliana Xavier share some of their opinions on and experiences with dating apps.
Many feel that the connections made on dating apps are ingenuine. “They (interactions with people on dating apps) suck. They’re ingenuine. You go onto an app and it’s like you hope in the back of your head that it’ll work out, that maybe this one is ‘the one.’ It’s not,” explains Gee.
Although Gee feels that the interactions have shallow intent and are really only a way to kill time he still finds himself going back to them in hopes that something worthwhile will come through.
From my experience, dating apps are a fun way to just meet and talk to people but most of the time I would either be too scared to meet up with them or we would stop talking before even getting to that conversation. After being on dating apps for a few months there have only been a handful of people that I talked to for longer than a week and only one that I’m still in contact with.
After two months or so of having a dating app I would find myself aimlessly swiping in hopes of matching with someone and getting momentary entertainment. In the end, I knew little to none of the things I would find on a dating app were going to last so a burst of entertainment or a slight ego boost was the most I’d get.
The occurrence of matching with someone is always somewhat of an adrenaline rush, the feeling of “ooh someone likes me,” keeps you coming back. “I go on it mostly for the validation because I think it’s just fun to see who matches with you,” Miyamoto said.
I got a dating app for the first time when transitioning into college. It quickly became clear that people didn’t want commitment; they either just wanted friends or hookups which didn’t fit very well with my hopeless romantic self.
I had never really been the type to be scared of commitment until I went to college and got a dating app. It didn’t help that during all this I was also questioning my sexuality again so I didn’t want to commit to something before I knew if I would like it or not. I didn’t want to end up being the leading cause of someone else’s heartbreak.
I worry that if I were to pursue a committed relationship with someone I met on a dating app I would get judged. There is so much stigma surrounding dating apps because of hook-up culture and people’s assumptions that I would feel shame for not meeting the person in a “traditional” way.
“I think dating apps can be inauthentic in the sense that they’re designed to showcase a person’s best features. We see traits we like on dating apps, but when we meet people in person, we begin to see things that the dating app alone didn’t reveal. This can lead to hesitation about whether or not to pursue a relationship,” Caistor explained.
Interactions with people on dating apps are fleeting, “It’s mostly just meaningless ‘hi’s,’” Xavier said.
In recent years millennials and Gen Z have popularized hookup and situationship culture. Dating apps such as Tinder and Grindr have normalized hookup culture to the point where the apps are really only used for that. There have been trends on TikTok recently where people show their Tinder messages and messages with their situationships. Trends like this continue to normalize situationship culture.
“I think they're (situationships) good ways to experiment without getting into something too serious. Although there is always an amount of time that a relationship should stay in the situationship stage,” Xavier said.
From what I’ve heard, seen, and experienced, the culture that is cultivated by dating apps commonly leads to heartbreak especially when one person wants more than the other.
There are a lot of pros and cons to hookups and situationships. On one hand, hookups are a good way to gain confidence because of the instant gratification that comes with it but on the other hand, they can be risky because you can easily get attracted which can be detrimental to one's mental health. The same goes for situationships, they can be a good starting point for relationships and can be a good way to try new things but you can easily get attached and there is potential for things to end badly.
There isn’t a right or wrong way to date or go about romantic or sexual experiences but with so much of our daily lives being online dating and relationships have become a lot more complicated. We’re in a more complicated time so it makes sense that dating and interacting with others, in general, would become more complicated.
Many would agree that using dating apps is a risk. But if there weren't any benefits to using them, they'd be irrelevant. So, to each their own – and swipe at your own risk.