Here we consider some of the problems that dating apps have presented:
Catfishing
No, this doesn’t have anything to do with actual fishing. Instead, it means to lure someone into a relationship under false pretences. A survey conducted by OpinionMatters found that 53% of US participants admitted to lying on their dating profile. For example, using a false persona and fake- images. People lie about their age, weight, height, and relationship status.
I think everyone has probably heard a story of their mum’s friend of a friend, who went on a Match.com date, and turns out their date had used a photo of themselves from 10 years ago and they had not exactly aged like a fine wine. But Catfishing can take a more serious turn when people lie about being celebrities and fabricate entire online relationships with unsuspecting people.
An example of this was when someone thought they were dating Katy Perry for six years. Instead, the person they were really talking to was a Canadian woman living in England pretending to be Katy Perry, creepy right?! The uncovering of this case was shown on Catfish: The TV Show. Highlighting that anyone can be fooled by an Internet persona.
People feel like they have been lied to. Meeting someone who is not who they initially presented themselves as online. It is easy to be disingenuous online, from using old photos or adopting a different, more confident, interesting persona. There is no one monitoring your online account to make sure you are telling the truth all the time. How can we be 100% sure who we are talking to is who they say they are. One dating app trying to overcome this problem is PriveTalk, which prides itself in having “real users with verified pictures” eliminating the possibility of catfishing… yay!
Ghosting
Due to the nature of social media and dating apps, it is really easy to just cut off all contact by deleting accounts and “disappearing.” You may have been talking to someone for a while, or even met up a few times, and out of no-where, they stop all contact. This is known as “ghosting” and is pretty prevalent in online dating.
As easy it is to find someone online, it is to get rid of them. It is possible that people think the person they are talking to on a virtual platform is not real; therefore it is easier to just ignore them than admit that you weren’t feeling it.
The “Grass is Greener” Attitude
We’ve acknowledged that people lie on their online dating profiles. It is also not uncommon for people to lie about their relationship status. How many times have you come across a friend’s boyfriend on Tinder..? Awkward.
It seems like some people don’t want to miss out and might find something better online. Like they are just keeping their options open. It’s as if something was to go wrong with their current partner, they have a back-up option. One study showed that 30% of Tinder users are actually married. Demonstrating that dating apps provide a source of temptation to be unfaithful in a relationship.
Not only that, but it is not uncommon that users will be talking to or dating multiple people at the same time.
“There are so many people available to you at any given time that most people end up dating/ seeing multiple people at the same time” – The Independent.
Suggesting that with so many “options” available, it is difficult for one person to commit as they feel like there is always someone better * rolls eyes *.
Tinder equals sex, right?!
Last week’s post Dating and The Tinder Effect looked at how Tinder has promoted a “hook-up culture”. That people assume that they can find someone to have sex with in no time at all.
I asked people for their own experiences with Tinder in order to understand the digital age of dating. Most of them agreed that people of Tinder presume you’re only on there for one thing. Many people also stated they received many explicit messages which put them off using dating apps. The results of the poll are below.
Although dating apps do place a convenience to meeting someone online and you may not have met otherwise. It also gives room to misinterpretation and unwanted sexual propositions. It’s like some people use Tinder and other dating sites as a digital marketplace for sex and ignore that some people may be after something more substantial.
Dating apps do allow people to meet people outside of their social circles and geographic location, unfortunately it is not always a positive experience. The world of digital dating can be extensive and exhausting, so maybe finding love at first swipe isn’t as easy going as we first thought.
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