Dating apps are considered, on one side of our society, a useful tool that gives us the opportunity to approach new people with extreme ease, in fact it only takes a few clicks to find yourself in a conversation with someone you have never seen and known before. Becoming an employee of these apps is one of the risks you may encounter when using them in a compulsive and assiduous manner. This can be accentuated by the personality of each user.
In France, where the questionable reputation of the first dating sites still persists in the public consciousness, these apps are seen with ambivalence because of their potential to encourage infidelity and harassment. In China, however, singles are moving to platforms that minimize aesthetic appeal to create personality-based connections.
Online dating services are still seen in a negative light by 56% of adults.
According to a study conducted by SurveyMonkey, online dating services are still seen in a negative light by 56% of adults. Part of this reputation is due to the difficulty of assessing a person based on an online presence, but there is also some concern about the superficial nature of contacts.
Making new virtual relationship takes time, in fact, you have to chat, exchange likes and then, meet 1. Most users use the apps at least 5 days a week and a third of those who use them spend at least an hour a day. Almost half of the users claim to have exchanged messages with erotic content, others claim to have had sexual intercourse with another user and some have managed to have a brief romantic relationship. Only a quarter have had a long relationship. More than a third of users are satisfied with dating apps 2, but just as many are disappointed: generally, women's expectations are met more than men's and the happiest seem to be those looking for a romantic evening. However, those who approach these tools in search of a soul mate should know that the majority of those looking for a lasting partner are dissatisfied.
Tinder 3 is one of the most successful online dating apps and currently has around 50 million members. Users of this app would seem to be looking for a romantic relationship. One of the reasons for Tinder's success is its simple and intuitive use: in order to subscribe, the user has to create a profile providing his personal data and a series of photos that best reflect his personality. Then they have the possibility to establish the criteria for choosing a possible partner, among which the age range and the maximum distance desired. Tinder will automatically select the profiles that fall within the criteria provided by the person, who can then choose whether the profile he or she likes. If it does not, it will click on the "swipe" button and move on to the next profile. If the liked person also returns the "like", the algorithm will make sure to put them in contact with the user (and we will have a so-called "match") with whom they can start a conversation. A peculiarity found by a study conducted by Strubel and Petrie in 2017 concerns self-esteem: it seems that the use of Tinder impacts more negatively on male users. The two scholars also noted that this application tends to encourage self-objection. By this concept we mean the internalization of an external point of view that leads the individual to increased levels of self-monitoring and control over their body. This would be exacerbated by the way Tinder works because the other, through swiping, is appreciated or discarded based entirely on mere physical appearance. It has also been pointed out that, on the one hand, receiving appreciation encourages narcissistic tendencies, but on the other hand, the mere fact of being assessed, scrutinized and objectified leads individuals to be overly aware of their own body and this could lead to anxiety, depressive symptoms, feelings of shame, sexual dysfunction, eating disorders and psychological stress.
The data collected 4 showed that compulsive participants were those who preferred to meet people online rather than live and were among the loneliest people. Compulsive use also has negative consequences on everyday life with the risk of creating problems in the workplace. A study entitled: "Swiping for trouble: problematic dating application use among psychosocially distraught individuals and the paths to negative outcomes" was published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. Another university study entitled: "The strenght of absent ties: social integration via online dating", by economics professors Josuè Ortega, from the University of Essex and Philipp Hergovich, from the University of Vienna, analyzed over twenty years of data produced by the online dating industry. The professors realized that one third of today's relationships are born online and the figure rises to 70% when it comes to homosexual couples. In addition, they found that dating apps have helped to increase the number of people of different ethnicities and social environments and have also had a positive effect on the duration of relationships. Their study seems to show that marriages between people who have met online last longer.
Quoting the "Center for Economics and Business Research", Italians also seem to be among the most active "dater" in Europe, there would be about 8.9 million singles who are actively looking for a new partner through these tools.
Dating apps are designed to connect people who want to create love or even occasional relationships and while using these apps it's easy to fall into some traps.
First of all, it should be noted that online dating apps have a problem with privacy and identity recognition. This is because many of the people who use them do not want their personal information (such as their last name) to be made public and prefer to remain anonymous. They are mostly fake girls or boys who, under the pretense of wanting to build a serious relationship, even proposing marriage or cohabitation, try to get money from the unfortunate, disappearing immediately after obtaining it. The aim is therefore to extort money from the victims who, unaware of being at the centre of a scam, are willing to make some financial sacrifice in order to get what they want. Often the scammers lure their victims by contacting them in chat rooms and then trying to establish a deep conversation with them. After a dense exchange of messages, the time comes when they ask for the money, making up multiple excuses.
To make the idea, according to the FTC, an independent consumer protection agency, in 2013 alone complaints from scammed users totalling 105 million euros were collected and in the same year, dating sites were not even as popular as they are now.
Even if one were able to understand the deception and escape the scam by avoiding losing money, the person who suffers such a situation could be affected by the private sentimental aspect, thus bringing us back to the problem of self-esteem.
Another unpleasant situation that could be created using these apps is the "blackmail of the compromising video". The victim is initially asked to meet via Skype or another similar app, then, during the conversation, the victim is urged to strip naked. The images are recorded and the scammer asks for a "ransom" for the deletion of the porn content, threatening to spread the material among the victim's various contacts. 5
A study by the University of North Texas, just presented at the annual meeting of the American Psycological Association, concluded that Tinder, the dating app used by 50 million people worldwide, can cause mental health problems. The researchers pointed out that it is still unclear whether these disorders are due to Tinder itself, or whether people who already suffer from certain insecurities are more likely to use apps of this type. The fact that Matching 3.0 is starting to create some problems, and maybe we could even imagine it after all.
The mechanism of the Swipe on Tinder does not give a chance to be known.
The 50 million people around the world who use it evaluate each other without ever having seen or heard each other by simply sliding their finger across the screen of the electronic device.
A study by Queen Mary University of London showed that normally women on Tinder are unhappy because they take less initiative and wait in vain for some man to contact them, and at the same time that many men swipe right just to see what reaction women have, that is, whether they like them or not. But aren't these fears and insecurities the same that we live (and endure) even in real life? 6