Dating is hard enough in the best of times.
Throw in nationwide lockdowns and a highly contagious virus for which
there is no cure or vaccine.
And, well, you'd expect dating to be the last thing on people's minds.
But dating is thriving.
With bars and restaurants closed across the country, some are getting very
creative in order to find love under quarantine.
Others are using dating apps in record numbers.
New dating platforms like OkZoomer, which is designed to connect college
students, are being launched to meet new demand.
During school, you know, I had my Polish club, and I had this volunteering
thing that I did, and I would go to my job.
And now I don't have any of that.
Singles across the country, and even those who may be attached, are turning
to online dating to stave off the loneliness of self-isolation.
But the rules of dating are also rapidly changing to adapt to this new
climate.
In New York, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S., the city's
health department put out a set of guidelines entitled "Sex and
Coronavirus Disease." One piece of advice from the government?
"You are your safest sex partner." So now Zoom and Facetime dates are both
the state-sanctioned and the cool thing to do.
I have literally four dates planned tonight because first of all, there's
no dealing with logistics, right, of having to find out where to meet or
busy schedules.
What place are we going to, you know, pick to meet at?
Are we going to have dinner, are we going to have drinks?
Who's going to split the bill?
Or is he gonna kiss me after the date?
Am I going to invite him into to my apartment?
There's so many different things that are very distracting.
Some say this stop-gap way of finding romance has the potential to
permanently change the way we date long after the lockdown's end.
The situation is going to pass, we're all going to get through it, but
what's not going to change are the behaviors that we're now adopting by
now being at home, by having things done remotely.
Whether it's through video calls, whether it's working from, whatever that
is. So it's very hard to break habits.
We're not necessarily solving a coronavirus problem.
We're solving a problem of loneliness that happens to be compounded right
now because of coronavirus.
But as novel as the change in pace might be.
Not everyone is optimistic about what the future of dating holds.
As the reality of indefinite isolation sets in, experts worry the lack of
physical intimacy isn't just an inconvenience, it could cause lasting
damage. Others wonder how sustainable is a connection made online?
And perhaps the biggest question on everyone's mind.
Can you actually find love without ever meeting somebody in person?
Before the pandemic, online dating fatigue was definitely a thing.
Dating app downloads for the top 15 apps was shrinking globally, and some
research showed that all that swiping just made people lonelier.
The pandemic, at least by some metrics, has been great for business.
A report by dating.com shows that global online dating is up 82 percent
since early March 2020.
And the U.S. takes the lead as the most active country for virtual dating.
Those forced to stay home, including some without a job, are looking
online for love or at least a social distraction.
As states across the country began rolling out stay-at-home orders in
March 2020, Bumble saw a 26 percent increase in the number of messages
sent on its platform.
Tinder saw the length of conversations rise by 10-30 percent, and elite
dating app Inner Circle saw messages rise 116 percent over that same time
period. Hinge also saw a spike in usage.
Messages were up 30 percent in March versus the first two months of 2020.
So we definitely see a spike in activity.
Our biggest day is what we call dating Sunday, its the first Sunday of the
year. And that's our biggest peak.
And already we see its 25 percent more than dating Sunday now.
So it is really a big thing.
The Inner Circle attracts users in the world's biggest cosmopolitan cities.
Think New York, Hong Kong and London.
The company's CEO tells us there was an 800 percent increase in members
talking about quarantine in those first two weeks of March.
Another top talking point—toilet paper.
To help users comply with social distancing rules, some companies are
adapting their business models to cater to the new norms of dating while
under quarantine. Hinge rolled out "Date from Home"—a feature that lets
users launch a video chat if both people agree to the call.
The Plenty of Fish app launched "Live"—which enables users to livestream
with potential matches.
And the League now hosts "League Live"—video speed-dating platform.
Bumble was ahead of the curve compared to some of its rivals, offering
in-app video calls since 2019, a feature that laid waste by many users
until now. Video chatting over Bumble rose 93 percent in the week after
Trump declared a national emergency.
We're seeing that our users are in fact adopting video calls and voice
calls, and they're using this feature to have more engaged conversations
and more meaningful conversations and first dates, maybe second or third
dates. We fundamentally believe that digital dating is not going anywhere.
This serves a real, you know, valuable place in people's lives, whether
it's love or friendship or business.
We offer business connections.
We offer friendship. And so I really encourage everybody right now to lean
into these digital connections while we all remain safe at home.
But even as video chatting picks up, there's one big looming problem users
run into. How long can you keep up a virtual relationship?
I feel like while activity is is maybe greater than ever before on these
dating apps, I feel like a lot of that will not result in longer-term
relationships, which maybe at the end of the day, that's fine for a lot of
people. And people are turning to these apps realizing that if nothing
else, it's just more of a social tool or a social network right now.
That kind of sentiment is taking a toll on some dating apps.
Just take Match Group, owner of popular apps like Tinder, Hinge and Plenty
of Fish. Even though usage and engagement numbers have been on the rise
since the start of the outbreak, in April 2020, the company started to see
a slight decline in subscriber growth and its average revenue per user was
flat. Which isn't all that surprising, given there's less of an incentive
to pay for features or join an app in the first place, when you can't
migrate your digital connection into the real world, while the impact so
far is minimal, this could end up being a problem for Match.
The company makes a lot of its money from membership fees and paid
features, so retaining and adding more users is kind of key to growing its
bottom line. Waning interest in paid dating apps also likely has a lot to
do with the fact that more than one in five American workers has lost
their jobs and filed for unemployment benefits.
With experts now warning the country is headed for a recession in 2020, and
with unemployment numbers growing by the day, subscriptions to dating apps
may be one place where people cut costs.
The longer, you're kind of stuck at home, the less likely you're going to
pay overtime. So people are downgrading plans a little bit.
They're buying a la carte features a little bit less frequently.
And that's having the impact of having a little bit of pressure on
subscriber growth and a little bit of pressure on revenue or ARPU growth.
But for now at least, Match Group is proving resilient.
Its stock is outperforming the wider market and the company beat its 2020
first quarter earnings estimates.
Its net profit grew about 30 percent in March 2020 compared to a year
earlier. The CEOs of Match Group and Tinder both declined to participate
in this video. In February 2020, Netflix released a dating reality TV show
called "Love is Blind." The show attracted a mass cult-following for
weeks. Social media was flooded with mentions of "Love is Blind." The
premise of the program is relatively simple.
Young and attractive singles, unencumbered by contact with the outside
world, go on dates with each other in isolated pods where they're unable
to see or touch the other person.
Sound familiar? Turns out dating during a global pandemic and being a
contestant on "Love is Blind" aren't too dissimilar.
Just take the case of Serena Kerrigan.
The 26-year-old New Yorker and creative director trust her gut when it
comes to meeting someone new.
You're going to know within the first five minutes of meeting someone, like
I knew within the first five minutes of you meeting you that I was—that I
like you. The first three seconds maybe.
So when you're going on Facetime, you're immediately having a
conversation. The focus is on communication, which I think is the
foundation of any great relationship.
Kerrigan has started live streaming some of her dates on Instagram, like
this one with Lucho.
According to Kerrigan, there just wasn't a spark with Lucho.
Her experience begs the obvious question: Can you truly gauge physical
chemistry in a virtual setting?
Dating expert Charlie Lester doesn't think so.
I'll be completely honest, I don't think you're ever gonna be able to
completely replicate that physical chemistry with someone have a video
chat. But it is a great precursor.
And it's a good litmus test, you'll be able to work out if you don't like
someone and if there's going to be potential there.
And I think the key really is to keep that communication up and keep doing
fun stuff and getting to know each other until you're in a situation where
you can be face to face and actually see if there's chemistry in real
life. Emily Hahn runs a bespoke matchmaking service in New York.
Some of her clients have told her that dating virtually has actually led
to more authentic connections, right off the bat.
You're forced to—you don't have any distractions around you.
You're forced to kind of, you know, make actual eye contact and find real
topics to talk to each other about.
Which is kind of nice, to have all that external noise cut out and to be
really focused on your date.
To try to more definitively answer the question of whether you can fall in
love with somebody without ever meeting them, let's turn to some science.
Helen Fisher is a biological anthropologist who has spent 20 years studying
the MRI scans of people who are madly in love.
Her mission? To figure out how love affects the brain.
Just because you can't touch somebody does not mean that you can't fall in
love with them. People for generations have fallen in love with somebody
that they've just heard about.
They've never met them. They've never seen them.
They don't know very much about them.
But their older sister said, "that that boy is going to be perfect for
you." And all of a sudden they get their imagination going.
Maybe they see a photograph of the person.
And even that can trigger the brain circuitry for romantic love.
Whether they remain in love after they've met the person, after they've
gone out with a person for a few months, that's a different issue.
What role does dopamine play in attraction?
The dopamine is what gives you that elation, the giddiness, euphoria, the
sleeplessness, the loss of appetite, the focus, the motivation, the
optimism of intense romantic love.
But it's not just the dopamine system at work when we're falling in love
with somebody at a distance.
Fisher says we're picking up on all kinds of cues about who they are.
Just take facial symmetry.
Lots of animals, including humans, are hardwired to find symmetry
attractive because it's seen as a sign of strong genes.
We also look at what people are wearing, examine their body language and
listen to voice tone, all to try to piece together who exactly we're
dealing with. But visual and auditory cues only go so far.
When you're on a virtual date, you're missing out on your sense of smell.
And for women, it's a major way we judge genetic compatibility.
Another key ingredient of the initial stages of attraction that's missing,
is oxytocin. It's activated by touch, something you obviously aren't able
to do when you're talking to somebody on Zoom.
This particular neurochemical is known as the love hormone, and it's
integral to forming an attachment to another human being.
Sociologists have long warned of the dangers of prolonged solitary
confinement because of this very thing.
Touch isn't just good for forming bonds with other people, it's also
physically good for you.
Among other health benefits, it reduces stress.
But public health experts aren't just worried about the fact that lots of
us are experiencing a lack of physical intimacy.
It's actually the loneliness that can take a major toll on our well-being.
Studies have tied extreme loneliness to rising stress levels and increased
inflammation throughout the body.
The long-term effects of an entire society in isolation—even scarier.
An April 2020 poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that nearly
half of American adults said their mental health has been negatively
impacted due to worry and stress over the virus.
In 2004, a study looked at the psychological effects of quarantine during
the SARS epidemic.
Over 30 percent of respondents reported struggling with depression, and
nearly 29 percent said they were struggling with post-traumatic stress
disorder. So that's a big part of where online dating apps come into the
picture. Even if you're not destined to find your soulmate, the bottom
line is that you will find a human to talk to.
That's a big part of what motivated Daniel Ahmadizadeh to start his own
dating app. Quarantine Together has no pictures, no bios and no screening
methods. You get randomly paired with someone every day at 6PM, just so
long as you've washed your hands.
Quarantine Together and that Netflix show "Love is Blind" share a lot of
similarities, which to me begs the obvious question—can you actually fall
in love with somebody without meeting them in real life?
The number one problem that we're solving is actually loneliness.
It's not romance.
Romance is our hook. Dating is our hook.
But more people just want to lean into humanity.
But what I do think is interesting is what "Love is Blind" is able to tap
into is a combination of that anonymity that we've identified as well.
But it also adds to what we've done, actually, which is there's also this
element of curation of people that are vetted and things that, then it's
secure. As states begin to relax quarantine guidelines, some think the
rules for dating during a pandemic will stick.
Pre-pandemic, dating in cities like New York was really expensive.
Virtual hangouts are saving singles in Manhattan hundreds of dollars, a
trend that will likely continue as unemployment tops 38 million Americans.
No money can also level the playing field.
Fisher thinks COVID-19 has given way to a new stage in the courtship
process. Whether this leads to a wedding boom post-quarantine remains to
be seen. But one thing that we can be sure of, the kind of physical
intimacy we're used to may be severely handicapped for at least a year or
two. Top White House health adviser Dr.
Anthony Fauci thinks we should never shake hands, ever again.
People's faces across the country are obscured by masks.
And even after there's a vaccine or a cure to coronavirus, some think we
might all be socially conditioned to think twice before risking a kiss or
even a hug with a relative stranger.
But not all post-pandemic dating habits are dread worthy.
It's also ushered in a new mindset, one where people are more willing to
be open. People are taking a lot more risks.
They're putting themselves out there.
You know, I used to be someone who was very picky about the swipe.
Now it's like you're cute, let's do it, let's do it.
What do I have to lose?
I have nothing to lose.
It's super fun. And and also, you never really know.
And I really do think that, again, it takes that superficialness out
because you're gonna meet them immediately.
Some singles I spoke to said they're more open than ever before to truly
blind dating. No pictures, no tag lines, no height or age filters.
They just want to form an authentic connection with someone without the
pretense of checking boxes first.
I think that, you know, people are more open to trusting us and letting us
do our art, so to speak, and really match them based on intuition and
energy and astrology and all of that good stuff, rather than just a
certain bucket list of on-paper things that they might think they're
looking for.