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Mari, the Happy Wanderer's avatar

Aha! My favorite economic concept, the perverse incentive! The people who use the apps want to meet someone and stop using the app, while the app makers make their money by keeping users hooked. This is a brilliant insight! No wonder the apps are frustrating to so many users!

I highly recommend Seth Stephens-Davidowitz’s new book, Don’t Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life. He has a chapter on online dating, and he points to another problem with dating apps: The apps prioritize traits such as youth, beauty, and physique--which are precisely the least relevant traits for happiness in a committed relationship. For a committed relationship to be successful, you need emotional maturity, a sense of humor, and compatible personalities, all ineffable qualities that emerge organically when you meet someone irl, but that are invisible to these apps.

Plus, as my son could attest, people lie on the apps, which means that users don’t trust them. It’s well known that men on the apps have no chance if they’re shorter than 6’, so men who are in the ballpark of 6’ (say, 5’9” or above) will say they’re 6’ tall. My son happens to actually be 6’, and he says that the women he meets are always surprised to see that he is in fact the height he reported in his profile. I suspect that lots of women lie about their age and weight. This is another perverse incentive: If you have no chance to match on these apps unless you meet certain superficial criteria, why not lie about those criteria? But that incentive to lie degrades overall trust in the apps and worsens the experience for everyone.

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RC's avatar

Im sure that most people who met online met through a dating app, but I’d still be interested in seeing the number breakdown further to those who met on a dating-specific app and those who met just randomly on the internet. I myself met my husband the analog way, in college in 2000, which according to your graph was the absolute peak of meeting your spouse in college. But since then, although I too am a member of the Oregon Trail generation, I’ve made many good and lasting friends on the internet. Not on apps designed for that purpose, but on message boards or blogging and commenting forums like Substack. The idea of a dating app terrifies me, but I’m quite comfortable (and good at) making friends online in the random way that mirrors the randomness of real life meetings. I also know a couple getting married soon who met online, but not on a dating app. They met in a forum about a shared interest.

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