What this story covers:
Dating apps operate on the principle that giving users more options will help them find the perfect match. But that’s often not the case. The overabundance of choices may be leading to swiping fatigue, also known as option paralysis.
Why it matters:
It’s so easy to swipe through potential matches that dating app users often make it through dozens of people in a single session. That can feel overwhelming, and studies show that when people are presented with more options they often are less happy.
By Travis Armbruster & Roshan Davis
Listen to users of dating apps discuss their experiences.
Courtney Dan Emily Kurt MaxWhat do you do after breaking up with your significant other? In 2020, the answer is often downloading (or re-downloading) an online dating app — or two. Leah, a 23-year-old social worker and graduate student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, did exactly this in 2019.
“I went through a breakup,” said Leah, whose last name isn’t being used to protect her privacy. “[Then] my ex reached out to me again and I thought it was a good idea to maybe try again. And it wasn’t a good idea. And when that ended, I was like, you know, I gotta move on. I gotta try something else, because I think part of it was that he was still like my only option at the time. So it’s like I just needed to try something else.”
That something else was Tinder, a dating app that, according to reports, has roughly 57 million users. After breaking up with her boyfriend of almost two years, Leah’s friends suggested that she try the app. She was nervous at first and initially rejected the idea. Part of Leah’s hesitation was rooted in the way dating apps are perceived by many people. Tinder, which launched in 2012, is often criticized for promoting a hook-up culture and reckless casual sex.
The app — and several others like it — works by pairing people based on geographical location. When both people swipe right, a match is made, and the two can begin a conversation. If one or both people swipe left, no connection is made.
The formula is easy to understand. The choices for swiping are plentiful. That can be a positive. Or it can lead to option paralysis, a phenomenon in which having more options makes it more difficult to make a choice. Users are expected to judge potential partners based on only a few pictures and a short biography, and that can make it much harder to pick a single person when there are so many profiles to sift through. And many people start to feel fatigued by the constant searching and swiping.
“I think it comes in waves,” Leah said. “I mean, I have been [fatigued] and I’ve taken like breaks from it. Not at the moment, but I definitely have.”
Leah is not alone. When users are expected to judge an entire person in a matter of seconds, productive matchmaking is hard to come by.
“I wish there was a way to narrow my options,” said Emily, a Tinder user whose last name is being omitted to protect her identity. “Finding someone who’s genuine is difficult. There’s just such a vast array of everybody and it’s just a lot coming at you at once.”
Other apps have emerged since Tinder, such as Hinge (the first app that Leah downloaded), which aims to change the swipe-based formula. But they all often suffer from the same issue: eventual exhaustion from the paralysis of choice, and from the ability to fly through dozens of people in a single sitting.
“Some of the apps have limits on the number of people you can like or match with in a day,” Leah said. “And I personally like that because … when you hit that limit, you’re like, ‘oh, maybe I should give it a break.’ Like, I know how many I had for the day and I’ve already gone through them.”
The problem is evident to many people who use the app. But how can it be fixed? How can dating app users overcome the choice paralysis?
‘A nearly endless supply’
In an Atlantic article, author Julie Beck dives into the declining rates of public satisfaction with dating apps. In the years following Tinder’s release, the novelty of dating apps has started to wear off, and the act of swiping has, for many users, become more of a habit than an actual attempt at finding love. With Tinder getting a reported 1.6 billion swipes per day, it is evident that users are searching through large numbers of people every time they open the app.
“Dating apps make it appear as [though] there is nearly an endless supply of potential partners,” Dr. John M. Grohol, the founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of Psych Central, an online mental health resource, said in an email. “In a marketplace where there is no perceived supply problem, one could quickly take for granted that a better partner is always out there, just waiting to be found. After having gone through hundreds or even thousands of such potential partners in an app, though, over the course of weeks or months, it may start to feel frustrating to a person that they haven’t yet found ‘the one.’ That might contribute to a sense of fatigue.”
Research supports this idea. In a study done by researchers Jonathan D’Angelo and Catalina Toma at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, more than 150 undergraduate students were given a pool of matches to choose from, either large (24 options) or small (six options). Some were also given the opportunity to “reverse” their matches later.
The study concluded that the students who were able to choose from a larger selection of potential dates were less satisfied with their choices than those who chose from a smaller selection, and those who chose from a large pool and also had the ability to change their minds were the least satisfied.
But is the grass really greener on the other side? No, it’s green where you water it.
“I didn’t have [Tinder] for a couple years,” Emily said. “But over this quarantine, I re-downloaded it because I was bored, and I think lonely, because all of my friends are in relationships.”
The theory that the overabundance of choices contributes to a “grass-is-greener” mentality holds weight. Option paralysis leads to a lack of satisfaction and feelings of exhaustion, according to the study by D’Angelo and Toma. But when all the major dating apps on the market (e.g. Tinder, Grindr, Bumble, Hinge) are based on casting a wide net into an infinite sea of people, how can we avoid this seemingly inevitable fatigue?
Maybe the solution is to change the interface of dating apps. But what would that look like? The new interface could possibly replicate the app described in an article by Vox and give people a “marriage pact”-style match. A test is taken that assesses a person’s core values, and a single match is made. This eliminates the expansive options, and forces people to truly try to make a connection with a specific person, instead of falling back on the idea that there are millions of other people to choose from.
But would that appeal to anyone?
“Yeah, I think I would be [interested in an app like that],” Leah said.
Too many options, none good enough
Leah has a very specific strategy when she uses online dating apps.
“So, on Hinge, you can — it’s not really a swiping app — you can like people,” she said. “But I don’t even like people, I just let them like me, and then I pick from those people because I already know [that they like me]. So I think because that’s my preference, I would be interested.”
For Leah, part of the appeal is in the knowledge that the other person in the interaction isn’t likely to simply drop the conversation, which is a hazard when everyone is talking to multiple people at once (Leah herself admits to talking at least casually with about 20 people at a time on the apps that she uses). A perfect match app, she said, cuts down on the volume of conversations and would potentially help people focus on forming a true connection.
“You waste so much time on these apps,” Leah said. “Whether it’s swiping or just talking to people and you go on … a lot of first dates that just, like, [you’re] indifferent about and they just don’t go anywhere. And especially if you’re looking for something specific. It’s hard to keep doing the same thing over and over again and just not getting the results you want.”
Sometimes, app users aren’t on the same page. Quarantined at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Leah, like many others, was spending her time chatting with someone on a dating app. Although they had matched before the mass social distancing had begun, their frequency of conversations had increased since then.
While Snapchatting one another, Leah’s match had asked her about the logo on her sweatshirt. After telling him that it was just the name of her university, he replied that the sweatshirt “would look better off.” Leah didn’t think that they were on that level or headed in that direction, and laments that the weeks that she spent talking to him (thinking that they were on the same page) could’ve been better spent doing other things.
Interestingly, this kind of interaction happens often enough that Leah and a friend of hers have turned it into an opportunity for comedic relief. After experiencing one too many occasions of either being ghosted (having a person end communications without notice) or having to ghost a match gone wrong, the pair began a Google document called “The Last Text,” where they upload screenshots of the last messages that were exchanged with matches on the apps. Many of the messages are as innocuous as “Merry Christmas,” but are still met with radio silence.
The possibility of matches turning sour in these ways certainly adds to the option paralysis that users experience — there’s always a fear that the person you choose won’t meet your standards or will end up being a creep, so there’s the temptation to not choose at all. And if you continuously run into this problem, fatigue begins to set in.
The gamification of dating
While an app that reduces options might seem like a perfect fix, it is unlikely to be implemented any time soon. Kenneth Hanson, a PhD student who wrote his master’s thesis on the psychology of heterosexual people who use dating apps, found that companies that run dating apps have a vested interest in keeping their users option paralyzed.
“I mean, I think they could never say it that explicitly, right?” Hanson said. “Because then it would be like, why would you be doing that? But it is a for-profit industry…if their app worked too well, then people would very quickly find partners and move off the app, which means they make less money.”
Essentially, the companies that run the apps make money off of people’s lack of choice. Dating apps like Tinder, Bumble and even Hinge (which advertises itself as the savior in “The Dating Apocalypse”) all have a financial interest in keeping users on the app, and encouraging them to go back to it as much as possible. Hanson refers to this as a “gamification” of dating, and reinforces that the apps are designed around short-term rewards that keep consumers coming back for more while still burning them out in the long run.
Leah isn’t waiting for the perfect app to arrive. She’s sticking with what’s out there and trying to stay patient.
“There are a few people that I talk to about hanging out after everything’s over,” Leah said, referencing the coronavirus pandemic. “So hopefully, like, all of this follows through and that ends up happening. But I mean, I see myself continuing to online date.”