﻿Do Dating Apps Make It Harder to Find Love? The most popular means for singles to meet is
via dating apps. Although the use of dating apps might help you discover new people,
it may also make it more difficult to fall in love and stay in love. So let's answer
why it's so hard to find love on dating apps. Firstly there are just way too many options...
Swipe left swipe right, you either get a match and start chatting or you get a repetitive strain
injury from excessive swiping. Hundreds of potential partners
may be found through dating apps, and most individuals desire a wide range of choices.
We believe that having many alternatives will make it simpler for us to find someone suitable.
However, when we have too many choices, it ironically makes us less satisfied with the
choices we make. Chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice cream used to be the standard options
now we have stracciatella and dulce de leche and a thousand more to choose from, and all this does
is leave you overwhelmed with which flavour to choose. Online dating is no different.
Researchers have discovered that individuals who picked dates from a larger pool of
potential partners were less happy than those who selected from a smaller pool.
The researchers found that people who had more choices were more likely to change their minds
about who they wanted to be with within one week. This suggests that having more choices makes us
less likely to want to commit to one person. And actually, people who chose a date from
the smaller pool were more satisfied with their choice over the week. You also have the concept
that people are more likely to be dissatisfied with their current relationship if they think
that there are better partners available. So in short options can be overwhelming.
A good friend Andreas has recently stopped using dating apps because he finds that it takes up
too much of his time and he gets exhausted from all the options. The irony is that the apps are
designed to save him time when meeting people, yet he is just finding it too repetitive.
Choosing from a large number of options is labelled "cognitive burden"
and "choice overload” by psychologists. When we are faced with too many choices,
our brains begin to focus on factors that can be quickly and easily evaluated, usually this means
simple factors such as physical attractiveness, height, and weight. This will explain why the
swiping mentality works so well on dating apps. Physical characteristics may make it more
difficult for us to form long-term relationships. As with the sheen of a new car, physically
attractive individuals are more inclined to break off their existing relationships
in order to seek out newer partners, possibly because they have so many options for partners.
Imagine this scenario, you strike up the nerve to speak to someone in a coffee shop.
You have just met someone in the physical flesh. We take in a lot of information about
one another during the first few minutes of meeting each other in person, including things
like the scent, nonverbal communication, and voice characteristics. These are all
things that can’t be transmitted digitally. However we're less inclined to share personal
information when we meet one another via dating apps—usually a first name, a country location,
and a few interests or hobbies from the profile are all that is given to wet others appetites.
So what happens when you don't exactly have the full picture…your
overactive imagination runs wild. We do this by filling in the gaps with high hopes,
we may project the qualities of a celebrity who shares similar looks or even a friend onto our
lesser-known potential partners. In some ways, we comfort ourselves to believe that our potential
partners will have features similar to our own. In essence we are a little crazy at times...
And in the confines of our bedroom or office this may heighten our excitement and get us
through the week until your date but the reality is often crushing disappointment as we have built
up an individual too high only for them to not match up to those qualities in person.
Another friend, Katie expressed frustration with dating apps because many men whom she
had met in person had lied about their descriptions on their dating profiles.
Ironically after showing me her profile, i noticed a few embellishments to her profile. She blushed
but said "well i have to make myself appealing," despite being hypocritical in her behaviour many
individuals who use Internet dating apps admit to falsifying information on their profiles.
Men tend to exaggerate their height, whereas women exaggerate their weight,
but people also lie about their age, profession, education, and relationship status.
Most are truthful about their photographs but the large majority add a filter or two.
A few tweaks to our online profile may make us appear to be more appealing for a short time,
but honesty and trustworthiness are seen as critical qualities when it comes to
long-term relationships, resulting in more stability and commitment.
Another interesting aspect is the price we pay or don't pay for dating apps...
The cost an individual is willing to pay for matchmaking services
will show their interest in starting a serious relationship. Think eharmony versus tinder...
People who are determined to be monogamous are often desperate in an excitable way to find true
love. As a result, many individuals are willing to pay a lot of money for a service that promises
to quickly find the person they want to marry. Singles who are content to remain on the market
for dating around, have the luxury of testing the free apps. Meaning that until they feel they
want to transition to a more serious stage of dating, whilst receiving poor current results,
they will readily switch to more prominent paid matchmaking apps.
As people get more patient, matchmakers have less reason to improve their technology.
In other words, if people don't want to commit, innovation is impaired or slowed down,
because the apps dont need to improve their quality of service if you keep returning.
They want to keep you trapped in the cycle of dating as you will become a returning user.
When you think about it, Tinder, Bumble, and Happn don't want you to get off the market.
They want to turn you into lifetime consumers. Match Group openly admits
in its annual report that "successful experiences ... drive repeat usage."
In other words if you start dating someone amazing on Tinder, you'll re-open the app
to see what other people are on there, as there must be more people like this...
Our friends at the school of life have a deeper perspective.
to paraphrase them succintly...Dating apps have made it easier to connect with other people,
but they haven't helped us become more patient, imaginative, forgiving, or empathetic. This means
that we are still not very good at the things that make relationships work.
Almost every person we meet will have some of the same problems as the person we don't like.
We will be ready for love when we stop being so hopeful about finding the perfect person
and instead realise that we have many choices but not as many options as we think.
Despite how curt this may sound it's incredibly sensible advice,
when you realise that you are not meant to be with someone it can be very liberating.
This can help us to stop wasting our time and energy on new relationships that won't work
out. Instead, we can focus on finding someone with whom we share a deep emotional connection,
which is necessary for a lasting relationship. It's not uncommon, I have friends who have found
wives and husbands on dating apps. The concept of dating apps and marriages is becoming more
frequent, then again if you throw enough darts at a board one should stick. But the vapid nature of
judging someone from a free dating app based on profile loosely saying they like dogs, gym-going
and pasta making complemented by 6 photoshopped pictures is an interesting start to true love.
It's not wrong, it's just a sign of our times. Love will always be hard to obtain,
but by defining what you want clearly and how much you are willing to sacrifice and
dedicated to finding it is up to you. For more on dating check out the playlist on screen now