Dating apps: yay or nay?

Dating apps have changed the way we connect with people around us. Meeting someone in person has become a coveted rarity, almost entirely replaced by ‘we met on Hinge’. We have all heard or experienced the dating app nightmares of boring profiles and even more boring chats and the abject horror of running into a failed match around campus. Yet, everyone knows some lucky minority who escaped the matrix with a successful date or relationship. So, do they work or not? Did some get lucky or are they really ‘designed to be deleted’?

El Morris, a student and dating app user said: ‘I like that I can select my type and find people that have very similar interests to me, it makes dating easy, you can choose what you are after and find those who want the same things.’ A survey done by Forbes reported that 78% of Gen-Z are looking for serious relationships on dating apps. Plus 20% interested in something more casual – a low pressure connection with one partner. There is a healthy variety of users with different goals for you to chat with. So, it appears the apps users may not be the real problem at hand.

Therefore, I believe that the real problems with dating apps lies in the apps themselves.

Tinder creators Sean Rad and Justin Mateen have stated in interview with Time Magazine that ‘We always saw Tinder, the interface, as a game. What you are doing, the motion, the reaction.’  The famous Tinder swipe is designed like a deck of cards, cast one away, see the next. Something many popular dating apps have adopted too. Being designed with gameification in mind, there is a conscious design element of addictiveness. So, what does this say about our ability to form a real connection with someone on dating apps, since they are made to keep you wanting more.

Let’s do away with Tinder and Hinge. You try an alternative app. Match.com, Plenty of Fish, Ok Cupid. Unfortunately, all of the aforementioned dating apps are owned by the same American company: Match Group. This company has run into scandals in the past. A sketchy safety policy allowed users of Hinge who had been reported for abuse to keep using the app, despite it explicitly stating in their policy “all accounts found that are associated with that user will be banned from our platforms”. Such as the case of Stephen Matthews, in Denver, Colorado. Who in October 2025 was sentenced to 158 years to life in prison after being convicted of 35 counts related to drugging and sexually assaulting eight women. The majority of whom he had met on Match Group apps and had been reported to them continuously since 2020.

Maybe its time for us to ditch the mainstream apps. Focus on non-Match Group alternatives such as Bumble or Breeze, who offer a safer and less addictive experience. Or, if you’re feeling brave, go the old fashioned way! Ask your course crush for their notes, try a new society, a different gym class. Real connection is out there in all its beautiful forms for you to go and find but it may just be a little more complicated than a swipe right.