To browse Academia. Tinder, a mobile dating application app , facilitates the initiation of new, potentially romantic relationships and promotes itself as a social discovery platform dominating the U.
This exploratory study investigates how people engage in relationship initiation behaviors through Tinder and highlights how interpersonal relationship initiation, selection processes, and strategic pre-interaction behaviors are evolving through contemporary-mediated dating culture. The study employed descriptive statistics and thematic analysis to analyze reasons for selecting and deleting Tinder, pre-interaction processes, swiping strategies, and Tinder hookup culture.
The prevalent view that Tinder is a sex, or hookup app, remains salient among users; although, many users utilize Tinder for creating other interpersonal communication connections Technological capabilities provide new ways to communicate, meet, date, and mate. In the early s, online chat rooms enabling users to communicate with one another relied on text to portray themselves Kennedy, Since then, online relationships have evolved to include digital dating.
Online personal advertisement sites were introduced, enabling users to post basic and personal information. These advertisements disclosed desirable partner characteristics and helped pave changes to traditional dating when internet-based sites, such as eHarmony and Match. Traditional online dating sites became a societal dating convention, desensitizing stigmas e. Over time, modifications enabled user anonymity, increased proximity features, and promoted easier accessibility.
Unlike earlier dating sites, the new technological and structural affordances and adaptations for smartphones and satellite geolocation features further increased opportunities for relationship initiation and spawned the mobile dating app evolution. The app industry markets advantageous dating services-time, ease, and proximity Quiroz, Dating apps employ a number of convenient variations that include selection processes personal advertisements or algorithmic patterns , platform systems online sites, mobile-only, or hybrids , classifications free, fee-based, or both , and varying global-positioning systems GPS parameters.
