A few days ago, La Vanguardia published a report on dating apps, such as Tinder or Bumble, which explained that the dating app business was collapsing. So much so, it was emphasized, that the shares of the main applications have fallen by around 80% in two years. It is difficult to know if generation Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) has had anything to do with this decline, although it does seem that this group is taking some distance from these technologies. It could be due to boredom, perhaps due to a bad experience, but it seems that he is increasingly opting for face-to-face contact when starting social relationships.
Maria is 24 years old. She explains that she downloaded Tinder right after the pandemic. “We had an important need for human contact,” she emphasizes. Overall, she had good experiences. She even states that she met “very interesting people,” although she clarifies that that was at the beginning. Lately, she no longer encountered such suggestive people, which is why she ended up uninstalling it.
He has a theory to explain this phenomenon. He argues that as the years have gone by, “the user profile that wanted to meet up to have a beer and see what happened has been disappearing from Tinder” and, failing that, “the guys who are looking for what they are looking for have remained.” ”.
And it goes further. He claims that his acquaintances have explained to him “that everyone worthwhile is now on Bumble.” He says she had it too, but she was too lazy to start new conversations. “They always explain the same thing to you.” Furthermore, on Bumble it is the girl who has to start a conversation (she has that prerogative), something that still gave her “more pain”. In the end, he ended up uninstalling it too, and he had (and has) a good opinion of it: “Those who switched to Bumble have ended up finding a partner, while those who continue on Tinder remain single.”
This last sentence can be read as a compliment towards Bumble, although it does not have to be seen this way if you are part of generation Z. “I think that we, in general, look for a relationship like the one that Bumble can offer us, but we are What Tinder can give us is less scary,” says Maria. In this sense, he argues that they need “contact a lot,” but at the same time they are “very afraid of commitment”: “We live in this dichotomy.”
In any case, what he does observe – he asserts – is that the people in his circle are “increasingly” uninstalling these apps. “I have noticed a very large decrease in its use.”
A recent study – published by Axios and the research firm Generation Lab and in which 978 US university students were surveyed – would confirm this point of view. The majority of them (79%) had not used any dating app in the last month.
In parallel, they would be recovering the most traditional forms of interaction. “We like getting close to someone in a nightclub or a bar,” says Maria.
From the university level they have a similar perception. This is stated by Josep Lluís Micó, dean of the Faculty of Communication and International Relations of the Ramon Llull University (Barcelona) and journalist expert in technology and trends. For him, this supposed abandonment of dating apps by generation Z is happening. “We have to think – he argues – that this is a group that has begun to socialize and have the need to relate in this dimension, more beyond friendship, just after the confinement due to the pandemic. Therefore, here there is a need for the physical, to recover space and direct relationships.”
Alba (21 years old) shares the idea. “My friends use these dating apps, but I think they prefer face to face to meet someone,” she argues. “Seeing a person in a photo is not the same as the feeling they give you when you have them in front of them. Furthermore, it could be a friend of someone you know, and that is already a filter.”
She installed Tinder when she left him with a former partner, with whom he was three years. He never met anyone, although he did chat with a few guys. “Most of them seemed very rude to me, that’s why I didn’t want to stay. They were going what they were going. They were very direct and did not give me confidence.” With some who did have a good relationship he shared on Instagram, even WhatsApp. “I think your Instagram profile reflects a lot of who you are,” he says.
Perhaps it is for this reason (to capture a generation that could be missing out) that Tinder has introduced new functions in its app, such as the possibility of customizing the profile, thus allowing “users to express their unique personality,” it defended. company in a statement.
Alba now has a partner, so she is no longer present on Tinder. Álvaro (26 years old), yes, although he says that he consults her “once a month.” Two years ago a fake profile was created: “It was to make a joke. “I had a comedy podcast and I wanted to explain the experience of being on the app.” In this time, she has only had one date, and it was through the fake account (the one she has now is real). He met a girl and the meeting was pleasant. However, the young woman ended up ghosting him, which is equivalent to disappearing and cutting off the other person.
He states that his close circle (“university classmates who are single”) is present on Tinder, but he does not know about their experiences. “We don’t talk about it. At first, because of the novelty, we talked about it more. They asked me how I was doing with the fake account. But now we don’t talk about it.”
Marc (not his real name of a 23-year-old) also used Tinder. He dumped it a year after starting college. He is from the outskirts of Barcelona and says that he did it to meet people from outside his surroundings. He assures that the experience was positive. So much so that the first contact with his current partner was through this app. They hit it off and shared Instagram. They were talking on this social network until the day came when they stopped doing so. Surely, through digital means they would never have achieved anything. But one day they met at a nightclub. “Since we already knew each other, we started talking.” And love arose.
“I guess through the app we saw each other as one more and meeting physically changed everything. In fact, face to face has always worked better for me,” she asserts.
Like Marc, Anna – who just turned 25 – is also not currently present on any dating app, although she has had them. Specifically, Tinder and Bumble. She explains that she downloaded them before the pandemic hit, when she was single (she has had a boyfriend for a year), and that she did it to meet people: “I had no intention of finding a partner.”
Fortunately, he ran into “pretty normal people,” but there came a time when he got tired and uninstalled them. “It was out of boredom, not because he had found a partner, that he had not done so at that time.” As for her boyfriend, she says, she met him later and in person.
He argues that his circle of friends is not present on these apps right now. “Before Yes”. She says that she has the perception that young people do not make it a priority to find a partner.
Ariadna (22 years old) would not agree. She does have a boyfriend. She explains that the first time she downloaded the Tinder app was during the pandemic. About three months ago she had left him with the man who was her partner at the time and she was bored. She used it intermittently: “I wasn’t very on top.”
He thinks it’s a good way to meet people. Of course, taking certain precautions, “especially if you are a girl.” Like other young people who appear in this report, she has the perception that her use has decreased, although she assures that her circle of friends either has Tinder or has had it. “I think it goes from time to time: you have it, then you leave it, you download it again…”
For Francesc Núñez – sociologist and emotion researcher at the UOC – this supposed decrease in the use of dating apps by this group could be explained by the law of diminishing returns. “When you buy a new device (whether technological or otherwise), at first you use it a lot, but then you get tired of it,” he points out. “In the case at hand,” he continues, “there was an entry of these young people into these technologies, which are magnificent for being able to find people to have dates with. But when you have done it many times, the excitement, the grace, diminishes,” he suggests.
On the other hand, remember that technology increases our capacity for action, although it does not nullify human competencies. “For example, cars allow us to travel distances very quickly. But the fact that they exist and increase that capacity does not suppress the human function. What do I mean? These technologies do not make the pleasure of flirting in the traditional way disappear, of going out, of meeting people, which is socially basic. “Not at all.”
That is why, he argues, people continue to find “pleasure and satisfaction in continuing to flirt as it has always been done.” A scenario, he emphasizes, that technologies “will never be able to eliminate.” Remember that “they appear, we domesticate them and find a place for them in our lives. At first there may be a fascination with them, and then they find their place.”
Josep Lluís Micó, a journalist specialized in technology and trends, still finds another possible reason for this supposed disenchantment of generation Z with these applications. “It is about the large-scale extension of less sexist thinking,” he points out. The position, especially of women, in the process of finding a partner has changed, he says. “Now it is less mercantilist, they are no longer a commodity, but they have a more clearly vindictive consideration, fortunately, and these applications or services are no longer conceived as a space where you go fishing, and this is also studied and influences this aspect ”.
Unfortunately – he continues – there are still behaviors where the message is not exactly this and actions are reproduced that continue to be sexist, “but obviously, if we compare the education that previous generations have received, in this aspect there has been considerable progress, which “It can produce a dignification of the individual that in the first instance has been physical, tangible, and later digital.”