You’ve been single for too long. You’re bored, lonely, and have had no luck finding “the one” within your in-person social scene, so you finally succumb to the enticing promises of online dating. It starts with a swipe! Make the first move! Designed to be deleted! Find your soulmate today! You download the app and begin building your profile – entering your name, age, a short bio, and uploading your best photos. In minutes, you’re scrolling through seemingly endless profiles of hundreds, maybe thousands, of singles the app claims you’re compatible with. Overwhelmed by the number of choices, rejected likes, bad pick-up lines and creepy messages on the app, you can’t help but wonder how likely it is that you’ll actually find a partner online.

According to a report on online dating statistics published on Finances Online, there were about 219.7 million online dating site or app users worldwide in 2019, and the number was expected to reach 276.9 million in 2024. The article also reports that there were “more or less” 30.4 million online dating service users in the United States, which is expected to reach 35 million in 2024. 

Online dating has fundamentally changed the dating landscape by expanding access and communication to potential partners and commodifying ideas of romance, love and relationships. Online dating hasn’t altered the nature of intimacy itself, but rather the mechanics of relationship initiation and the human mindset towards love and relationships. 

The Emergence of Online Dating Apps

Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge are the most widely used dating apps, especially among teens and adults under 30. The apps allow the user to swipe left or right on profiles, left to pass, and right to “like” the profile and potentially form a match. When a match is formed between two users, it allows them to begin private messaging with one another. An article about online dating published by the Pew Research Center in 2023 states that Tinder is the most popular dating, with 79% of American online daters under 30 saying they’ve used the platform.

Though the apps function similarly, they have different profile prompts, branding themes, and connotations. A case study on Tinder by Maria Stoicescu for the Doctoral School of Sociology at the University of Bucharest mentions that Tinder is often associated with hookups. Hinge was designed for those wanting a serious, long-term relationship, according to Tinder’s official website. Bumble usually draws users looking for casual relationships and friendships. Lesser-known dating apps like Her, Feeld and Grindr appeal to the LGTBQ+ community by creating safe spaces for non-binary and queer identities to connect.

Who’s using dating apps and why?

The article about online dating published by the Pew Research Center reports that of the 30% of U.S. adults surveyed who said they’ve used dating apps, and that men are more likely to try online dating than women. The article states that 51% adults identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual are more likely to have used a dating app than 28% of straight individuals. 

Though these apps were designed for romantic relationships, studies show that people have begun using them for various other reasons, including casual encounters, entertainment, or out of boredom, which spurs the question of how online dating apps may have changed what people are looking for. 

According to Dr. Meara Faw, an associate professor of communication studies at Colorado State University (CSU), dating apps didn’t change what people are looking for but instead gave people an online space to pursue a connection more efficiently and safely outside the label of a traditional heteroromantic relationship, such as a hookup.

“Even before apps, [hookup culture] was a thing that was happening, but it wasn’t necessarily visible, and it wasn’t something that people were declaring or even had a space where they could,” Faw said. 

Twenty-five participants responded to a non-scientific, non-anonymous survey for this story; all participants were under the age of 30, 21 out of 25 participants currently reside in Fort Collins, and the majority are women. The survey was conducted over a period of two weeks by being repeatedly posted on a public Instagram account story. The survey found that 64% of people surveyed use Tinder, 68% use Hinge, 40% use Bumble, and 16% use a different app. 40% of people surveyed stated they were looking for long-term relationships, followed by short-term relationships (24%) and hookups (12%). 

Online dating using apps versus Traditional Dating

Dr. Natalie Pennington, an assistant professor of communication studies at CSU and an expert in technology and human relationships, said there’s a tradeoff between traditional dating and dating online. 

“Because you might meet somebody at a bar and have the first conversation, the more you talk, the more you realize you like them,” Pennington said. “Versus swiping on an app, you’re looking at such a bite-size bit of information and then saying yes or no. So, you might swipe on somebody you’re not interested in or swipe away someone that could have been a good match for you.”

According to a collaborative research article by Eli J. Finkel and colleagues analyzing online dating from a psychological perspective on Sage Journals, the largest strengths of online dating apps are access to potential partners and communication with those partners. Pennington said that online dating can connect people with identity similarities, which could be why online dating graphics tend to skew towards minority groups, like the LGBTQ+ community. 

“So, if you’ve got like a part of your identity that you feel is super important to you and want to find somebody of that similar identity, then something like online dating can help you just gain access to meet people that you might not have met otherwise,” Pennington said. 

Faw said that the internet makes it easier to connect and stay connected, but it lessens the depth of those connections because dating apps allow for selective self-presentation. For instance, when picking your profile photo on Tinder, you aren’t just selecting the most recent photo in your camera roll – you’ll search through your best pictures and find the one where you look the most attractive and exciting. 

“When we first connect online, [we only learn] what they’re choosing to share and disclose with us, and we often end up filling the blanks in our minds for ourselves. And when the moment comes where we make that decision to go offline, it can be challenging for us because the reality of the person we’ve built up in our minds isn’t the actual reality of the person.”

Faw explained that people sometimes experience connections online as hyper-personal, where they feel like they deeply connect to someone in a relationship online much quicker than in person, largely due to selective self-presentation. “Self-editing” online, as Faw coined it, makes translating the relationship offline difficult because people spend too much time cultivating a relationship online before meeting in person, which results in people idolizing potential partners. 

“When we first connect online, [we only learn] what they’re choosing to share and disclose with us, and we often end up filling the blanks in our minds for ourselves,” she said. “And when the moment comes where we make that decision to go offline, it can be challenging for us because the reality of the person we’ve built up in our minds isn’t the actual reality of the person.”

When humans experience a romantic relationship, the psychological process they undergo is characterized by attachment theory, a psychological explanation for how emotional bonds and relationships between people form. This theory translates both similarly and differently when forming relationships online versus in-person.

How have online dating apps changed human mindsets towards relationships and love?

Multiple studies demonstrate that the explosion of online dating apps has drastically changed how people think about relationships and love. Danni Honeyman, a CSU psychology student who’s studied online dating, said that it’s become very similar to an addictive game.

“[When you swipe] you’re getting hits of very fast, brief information and getting a reward from it,” Honeyman said. “When you swipe or match on somebody, it creates dopamine and makes you want to keep doing it.”

The research article by Finkel and colleagues reports that the profile-browsing feature of dating apps causes users to see partners as options in a dating market. This shopping mindset cultivated by online dating apps can result in a decision process heavily based on someone’s appearance. CSU art history student Cassie Banuelos said she reached a point where she was “judging way too harshly on appearance and not interested in getting to know [users] as people.” CSU English student Erin Fuller said they’ve also experienced this. “[Online dating] can be kind of shallow,” Fuller said. “I’m guilty of looking at someone’s appearance [first] and swiping based on that.” 

“[When you swipe] you’re getting hits of very fast, brief information and getting a reward from it. When you swipe or match on somebody, it creates dopamine and makes you want to keep doing it.”

Stoicescu states that as the popularity of dating apps grew, so did the practice of “ghosting,” or abruptly ending all forms of communication with no warning or explanation. According to the study, users ghost to “escape the unwanted relationships without ever having to break up.” However, this can have a negative psychological impact, leaving those who were ghosted confused and desperate for answers. 

Honeyman emphasized that the number of rejections people receive on dating apps negatively impacts the human psyche. Banuelos said she feels that dating apps perpetuate specific unspoken rules in communication, like ghosting or having to seem less interested in the relationship than one really is. 

 “They’re not necessarily healthy or direct, and because of it, nobody’s actually being clear about what they want or how they feel,” Banuelos said. “It’s like a weird little guessing game, and it sucks.”

Do online dating apps actually work? 

A Forbes Health article published in 2024 reported that nearly 70% of 5,000 U.S. respondents met someone on a dating app and said it led to a romantic relationship, while 28% did not. Men (75%) are more likely to enter an exclusive relationship from a dating app than women (66%). 

In contrast, 72% of the non-scientific social media survey participants mentioned earlier reported that they’ve never been in a successful relationship where they met their partner on a dating app. Most attributed the lack of success to an inability to find someone with similar relationship goals, the nature of dating apps feeling like a game, and potential connections fizzling out after one date or a few online interactions. 

Banuelos, who met her current partner because of Tinder, said she doesn’t think they would have started dating had it not been for the app. The pair first matched on the app, then briefly saw each other in person but didn’t speak until they began messaging on the app. Banuelos said her partner wanted to flirt with her in person but felt intimidated because she was with friends and he was at work, so instead, he went to Tinder that night. 

But Fuller mentioned that the stigma of failure surrounding online relationships could lead to their demise. “I think people have an understanding that if you meet someone on a dating app, you aren’t going to last, it’s inevitable, you will break up,” Fuller said. 

Faw described online dating apps as tools, and success is all about how one uses them and whether they help one accomplish one’s goals. However, Honeyman emphasizes the vitality of in-person communication because people can’t connect intuitively online. Faw advises moving an online relationship offline sooner rather than later to avoid idolization and allow an in-person connection to form more quickly. 

“Just being authentic about who you are, you know, making those strategic choices on what to share, how to share types of pictures and text, all those things, and then being open to having conversations with people.”

So, dating apps might work, or they might not. Pennington said it’s almost entirely subjective and dependent on what one’s looking for. But she added that if your goal is to meet somebody, there’s evidence that online dating facilitates that. 

“Just being authentic about who you are, you know, making those strategic choices on what to share, how to share types of pictures and text, all those things, and then being open to having conversations with people,” she said.