Are Dating Apps Still Relevant Today?

Imagine a world where the only way to romantically meet someone was through your own network of friends, family, co-workers, classmates, and at your local stomping ground.

For many Gen Z-ers, this would be almost impossible to conceive, but for their predecessors, this was the norm up until almost 10 years ago when dating apps came onto the scene and changed the game with their seemingly endless options and “swipe to like” approach.

Today, dating apps are now the go-to matchmaker for singles looking for love, so much so that a study at Berkeley University found users are actively swiping for about 12 hours each week on average in search of that “special someone”.

Post-pandemic, many singles are now craving real human contact and are keen to trade their digital crushes for more meaningful in-person connections. The only problem? Most people these days have no idea where to meet available matches offline.

New Dating Apps

Luckily for singles, many dating apps seem to have grasped the reality of this new dating era and are once again revolutionising the dating landscape by expanding the options for singles to get back out into the real world and meet like-minded and eligible matches.

That’s why female-founded match and chat app Ziinkle is “up-dating” the dating experience by showing users exactly which venues other singles who match their preferences are at. If there’s a vibe, users can then make their move the old-fashioned way IRL or express their interest by sending a ping.

Anyone who has ever used a dating app before though is familiar with just how utterly uncomfortable meeting someone for the first time can be. Having been on and off dating apps since they launched, Alexandra Cuthbert is familiar with the difficulties of modern dating and claims that one of the benefits of using disruptive new Out There Dating App she co-founded has to do with being able to “get that awkward first catch up out of the way immediately”.

Instead of endless pre-date talk with “pen-pals”, Out There gets straight to the point by telling users where to go and who to talk to based on their dating preferences. Users can even set their own icebreaker topics, so by design there’s never any need for cheesy pick-up lines. No spark? No problem! At worst you might have to cut the chat short or as Cuthbert says, “at best you might make a new friend”.

Gone are the days of catfishing with the launch of Hello Tiger, another new dating app that’s been designed to fast track the path to love by saving singles from having to sift through fake or overedited profile pictures with predictable bios. Instead, up-to-date photos of users are taken weekly by the app so that singles can decide whether they want to cut straight to the chase with a one-minute speed-dating like video conversation which the matched couple can choose to either extend or decline once their time is up.

Original Dating Apps

What about the OG’s of the dating app world?

According to Hinge, the self-proclaimed dating app “designed to be deleted”, dating apps “will continue to be the most popular way to meet someone”. 75% of their users have, however, said they want to get to know singles in new authentic ways because assessing chemistry online is one of the “hardest parts of modern dating”. To help users do just that, Hinge launched Voice Prompts in October 2021 to further complement the apps video chat function. While the company says these features will “never replace meeting up in person”, it appears singles are matching online a lot more now as Hinge saw a 56% increase in dates in the AU in January 2022 in comparison to the same month in 2020.       

Likewise, Bumble’s APAC Communications Director Lucille McCart claims that “dating apps are very much here to stay”. When asked if singles are still swiping right, McCart revealed that a study from Monash University predicted that within the next 20 years more couples will be meeting online than offline. This theory is made all the more believable by the fact that in 2021 the total number of paying users across Bumble Inc apps increased to 2.9 million compared to 2.5 million in 2020. And it’s no surprise because as McCart says, “who doesn’t love the idea of being able to potentially meet ‘the one’ from the comfort of your couch?”. The answer? Apparently, only few do!

Verdict

As we navigate the post-pandemic era, it appears the singles have become even more reliant on having to search online in order to date offline. Perhaps this means that dating apps are not only still relevant but needed now more than ever before?