Why are people tired of Dating Apps?

If we were to plot apps in a hierarchical structure with apps we love at the top and apps we don’t at the bottom, then it’s very likely that most would place Dating Apps in the bottom rungs. Some might even feel that they don’t deserve even that recognition. 

This hypothesis isn’t out of thin air. People are not just tired of Dating Apps, but a subculture has formed that professes abject detestation of them.

According to the Forbes Health survey, around 80% of Millennials and 79% of Gen Z experience some sort of Dating App Fatigue.

But wait a minute. 

Unlike some apps that may be critisised for their superficiality, Dating Apps solve one of the most fundamental problems of society- human connection. 

So, how exactly did we come here? What went wrong?

Dating Apps are supposed to be Linear, but they’re not

In economics, there’s a concept of Linear and Circular economies. 

In Linear economies, you produce goods, consume, and discard them. However, if you reuse or recycle the goods after consumption, then it becomes a circular economy.

Similarly in apps, there are applications made for recurrent usage, and those meant to be used only once and then deleted. While Facebook or Zomato fall in the first category, Dating Apps fall in the latter.

However, problems arise when the distinction between the two starts getting blurred.

Imagine if you run a business. To you, who would be a better customer- one who comes to you and never returns again, or the one who keeps coming back to you?

The latter, right?

From a business point of view, it is rational. But from a matchmaking point of view, it is not.

You’re supposed to fall in love once, with limited people, not repeatedly with a new person each month.

But here’s what’s happening- Dating Apps have a retention rate of around 5% on average over a period of 30 days (Bumble has a rate of 11% while Hinge has a rate of 10.8%), comparable to that of other categories of applications like shopping or gaming.

App Category	Day 1 Retention	Day 7 Retention	Day 30 Retention
Dating Apps	12%-11%	~10%	~5%
Shopping	24.5%-33.7%	10.7%-16.1%	5.6%-8.7%
Gaming	26%-29%	~24%-12%	~6%-20%

So people are supposed to delete the apps, but they’re not.

It’s because Dating Apps are running as businesses, not matchmakers.

The hatred, however, is fuelled by the tactics used by those apps to retain users.

How users are retained on Dating Apps

In an interview in 2018, the co-founder of Tinder confessed that the swiping feature of the app was inspired by a psychological experiment by B.F. Skinner to turn pigeons into gamblers.

Staying close to the inspiration, Tinder now prioritises users who are more active on its app for matchmaking than those who are not. So, to find the love of your life, the app nudges you to stay on the app and continuously use it. 

What’s interesting is that Tinder is not alone in this.

In February this year, a lawsuit was filed against the Match Group, which owns Tinder, Hinge, and several other dating apps, for predatory practices and addictive designs for increasing user activity at the cost of the mental health of users.

The way these apps accomplish this is through Gamification.

The apps are designed in such a way that the user is rewarded for activity and usage, as if acquiring points in a game. 

While it helps the apps, it keeps the user away from settling with a person from the same app. 

Imagine if you placed an order on Zomato, but instead of delivering your food, the delivery partner kept talking to you on the phone, asking for directions until you canceled it on your own.

Well, that’s exactly what’s happening with dating apps. People have named this phenomenon “situationship”.

But it isn’t just the app design that’s leading to the burnout with Dating Apps. Flawed understanding of the dating process, user behaviour, and misaligned intentions are as much to blame. 

The broken path to finding love.

One of the most frustrating parts for users on Dating Apps is the inability to find love. 

While some of that inability is structured to give the user a perpetual hope of finding the one, the other part is that Dating Apps do not replicate the real-life process of finding love. 

This was lucidly articulated by a user on Twitter:

Though abstract, the user is correct in pointing out that the process after matching with a person is one of elimination, not pursuance. 

The Dating Apps not only provide multiple exits to you after matching, but also altogether bypass the process of Courtship, an essential phase for falling in love.

The only way we can ensure that Dating Apps actually help you find your partner is by taking into consideration the way people actually find love, rather than throwing a bunch of people together based on shared interests.

And more importantly, by acting as a matchmaker, not a business.

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If you liked reading this article, then stay tuned because the problems we’ve put forth aren’t exhaustive. We will be covering more on why people are feeling this burnout in our next article.