After messaging that she was setting off, she hopped on the Northern line. Emerging on the other side, back into phone signal range, she suddenly sees two messages from her date pop up. Then, she realised his WhatsApp photo had disappeared. It was 6. Just days after Jenny posted her TikTok, another video went viral. Turning encounters into content. Fear of intimacy and fear of rejection battling it out. Annie Lord, a Vogue columnist and the author of Notes on Heartbreak , blames dating apps.
Most discussions spin around the same arguments: apps reduce attraction to a formula; they rely on superficial, snap judgements; they make dating transactional. One element of app culture that can sometimes get overlooked, however, is the fact that apps are profit-driven businesses. No matter what their marketing copy might proclaim, they are designed to never be deleted.
Studies have shown dating apps to be pathologically addictive. Only two years after its launch, Tinder reported that the average user was logging in 11 times a day. What the infinite swipe design does is get you hooked on random rewards โ not positive interactions, but the dopamine hit of getting a match.
Indeed, according to a study, fewer than 10 per cent of matches are followed through with any contact at all. Lord thinks this is a crucial part of why dating feels bad at the moment.
She admits to being guilty of this herself. In her view, the main problem with dating at the moment is simply exhaustion. While Big Tech companies pose as helping hands in the pursuit of love and happiness, many of their users find themselves resembling machines.
