In theory, dating apps are ideal. They can help you find somebody who matches with you on the things that matter most to you, give you a handy carousel of photos of potential partners as well as a short bio describing who they are before taking a plunge into a date and even just provide a wider scope on what your city has to offer in terms of singles.
In practice, though, they aren’t quite so straightforward. From ghosting to catfishing, it can feel like a minefield out there and it appears that the longer we spend on these apps looking for love, the more we lose faith that it could ever happen from ‘the apps’.
HuffPost UK spoke exclusively with two singles about their decision to ditch the apps.
First we spoke with Chris, who said: “For me, they just left me feeling pretty crappy about myself. Between matches fizzling out to people you’re excited to meet actually having no personality in person, it just feels like applying for jobs in a crap jobs market.
“I’m also fed up with predatory algorithms, which hide users that they deem “out of your league,” require users to learn the tricks of the apps to get the “better” matches, and generally incentivise apps to keep users there.”
He explained that the only app he has kept is Feeld as a ‘last roll of the dice’ as he had paid for a premium experience, but even then, he rarely looks at it.
Instead, he said, “My alternative lately has actually been using Instagram to create conversations with people I have shared interests with, chatting with them for a bit and then seeing if they’d like to meet up.
“So far, it’s led to one short-term thing over the summer, and I recently started dating someone new.”
Chris has even gone the old-fashioned route and taken his quest for love offline: “I’ve also used my aversion to the apps to try and go to more events and singles nights, from a board game singles meet-up to a sex-positive club night, and generally to try to be more chatty and open when meeting people at the gym or when I’m generally out and about.”
We also spoke with Andy, who has stepped away from dating apps after almost 12 years of using them to find matches.
They said: ” Whether it’s because I’ve met someone or I get app burnout, I will publicly declare “that’s me off the apps” only to inevitably find my way back of a hungover Sunday morning.
“This year I’m trying to make it stick. I can’t think of a single other activity in life where you actively pursue your own misery like scrolling through dating apps. ”
For Andy, dating apps were a means to find a long-term relationship. They explained: “If my end goal was a never ending series of hookups then there’d be no problem, but it’s not, and trying to find something more meaningful in these spaces has mostly ended in failure.
“Whether it’s through conversations fizzling out, or going nowhere at all, the amount of time you have to put in to get so much as a half hour coffee is just not worth the investment. You tell yourself “maybe the next one will be the coffee”, but it has not been.”
These days, they are off every app apart from Grindr, “because hooking up and dating feel like two entirely different activities at this point. Hooking up is 5 messages, a quick shower and 20 minutes of exercise.
“Dating is like training for a marathon, right down to the way your friends, who did their marathons at university and never need to do one again ask “How’s training going?” “NOT GOOD, BOB.” you reply.”
Andy hasn’t tried to date elsewhere. They said: ” I’ve always worked towards happiness on my own with a relationship being something that would be nice, but not essential.
“I won’t lie, it is hard to meet new queer people organically and the appeal of the apps is that you have this online space that’s for people like you, but it’s the wrong space, the wrong venue and it feeds on your loneliness in a very capitalist way which I don’t want to be a part of anymore.”
According to research by Ofcom released this week, there has been a decline in UK adults’ use of each of the top three highest-reaching dating services.
In the report, Ofcom said: “Match Group’s dating services, which includes Tinder, Hinge, Plenty of Fish and Match.com, together reached 6% of UK online adults (2.9m) in May 2024 (down from 3.2 million the year before).”
It seems that the dating landscape is changing again.
