Blog

Dating apps in the Pandemic indeed pave the way into the real LOVE

May 29, 2020Group 4

by maju15ae@student.cbs.dk

INTRODUCTION

Let’s face it, dating apps can be a little weird. Two people behind a screen communicate in order to possibly meet one day. But what happens now, during the Pandemic, as it brings an incredible change in people’s both professional and personal life. How does the app organize us, when it is impossible to meet the person in the outside world? Did they really lose their purpose? The aim of the presentation today is to investigate the increasing use during the covid 19 era and how the user’s behavior changed. To gain insight into this research question we went into the field ourselves as well as developed a questionnaire regarding user motivation.  

SETTING THE BACKGROUND: THE INTENDED AND UNINTENDED USE

First, we decided to set the background and explore the general use of dating apps, regardless of the timing. We discussed that even though they were created mostly for finding a partner or enabling casual dating, some unusual unintended usage occured. For instance it is common to use Tinder as a mere self-confidence boosting tool, or as an easy access to business collaborations. Some people even use it solely for financial gains, such as free drinks. 

SETTING THE BACKGROUND: THE  RISK VS LOVE TRADE-OFF

Moreover, throughout the week we noticed how significant is the pay-off between risk and potential gains from using the app. On one hand, with the huge “supply” of singles the possibility of finding the love of your life is great. However, the risk of your most  intimate data being misused against your will is  quite frightening. 

SURVEY FINDINGS: ARTIFICIALITY AND NO COMMON GROUND

When it comes to the background findings from the survey we conducted, we definitely noticed that users feel uncomfortable with the artificiality of the relationships. Lack of real emotions, connection and engagement is often mentioned. Moreover, it seems clear that the indicated advantage of real life dating is that one usually meets the other person within certain context, whether it is the same work, hobby, etc.  Simply the common ground eases the first stages of the relationship. 

SURVEY FINDINGS: DIFFICULTY WITH ESTABLISHING TRUST 

Next, we discussed trust. From the visiting lecturer’s work on establishing trust in the online environment (Bialski, 2009) we learned that the trust occurs once the virtual community shares the same goal, hence we were interested to know how is this aspect actually organised among the dating society.  We were surprised to see that in fact the users very often indicate little or no  trust while using Tinder. Although, we hypothesised that this missing element may be due to the lack of  common goal for the community of online dating, which was actually proven by our survey insights. 

EMPOWERMENT THROUGH SWIPING AND UNMATCHING 

Another aspect that we discovered ourselves, as well as we found out from the questionnaire is that the gamified activities such as swiping or unmatching provide users with great empowerment. Even though some users felt uncomfortable - reporting experiences similar to  visiting  “huge supermarket with infinite variety of product” - a majority acknowledged that swiping gives them control and confidence.

THE USE: NOW AND THEN

In our survey, we also really wanted to answer the main research question that we posed. The results indeed proved our hypothesis, that the intentions to use Tinder actually changed due to the Pandemic. More users claimed to open the app only to seek social interaction, fight boredom or connect with other human beings. Whereas before the primary purpose was the intention to find love or sex.  We argued that people will in general tend to use the dating apps more, for they are more motivated or internally pressured to find partner which can support them during the difficult times. We indeed found out that 88% of people use Tinder more often than  in the usual setting. 

CRISIS MANAGEMENT TOOL 

We noticed that some people developed kind of uncertainty about the situation adding up with a need for control and anxiety. 45 % felt anxious about the corona, but  80 % felt that dating apps help them to reduce this tension.  But it helped even more. It clearly helped to reduce one important fact we are all fighting: loneliness. Being all by yourself at home can provoke a desperation for seeking love and even the willingness to put a lot of effort into this search for a partner. Some even seem to give up their rational, critical thinking. 

SELF PRESENTATION IN THE CORONA TIMES  

Concerning the self presentation, people started taking up elements of the crisis to present themselves in a humorous way. Showing some funny photos of corona beers or wrapping it into texts. 

Another outcome of the survey is that using the app now is connected to a completely different context of movement. Once the only way of getting to know the people was to show some guts and go outside to meet them in person. Now you can just sit comfortably on your sofa and let the virtual conversation take over. 

THE END TO THE STIGMATISATION  ERA

In times before Covid 19 people tried to avoid telling people the truth about how they met. They wouldn’t admit it and some even became very inventive with their stories. But now the people are kind of forced to use the app and to meet people there. So maybe it becomes the new standard after it is all over.  Some people tend to demonize the app and complain about the interchangeability and superficiality, which is paradox because even though they’re using it. So maybe it already became the new standard. 

WAY BACK INTO THE REAL LOVE 

Obviously, the current crisis has the power to change the entire way dating apps organize the formation of human relationships. The virus slowed things down. Given the necessity to stay inside and to relinquish any social activity, people can’t do the usual small talk, but might talk about more intimate topics, in order to really get to know each other. Additionally, sex and money lose their relevance in the dating context: If we are forced to meet virtually there’s no chance that discussions about who is paying for dinner and drinks arise; status symbols become less salient. We can’t have sex at the first date, but instead are encouraged to talk in the first place; to get back to the essential aspects that really determine love and affection without being influenced by bodily attraction. The virus seems to shift priorities and has the potential to change relationships even in the long term. In the future, it might be the standard to get to know each other virtually first before meeting in real life. This offers potential to diminish the negative stigmatization usually associated with dating apps: people might no more feel ashamed about having found their partner via Tinder, but might face a higher social acceptance of relationships like these. We want to take an optimistic - maybe naive - point of view by claiming that the crisis has the potential to change relationships for the good, to find our way back into real love. To reduce the current superficiality of dating apps to some extent and to focus on more natural elements of getting to know each other again. Are we in a situation where the concept of “slow love” might take over again?

“Romantic love can be triggered, whereas feelings of deep attachment take time to develop. We were built for slow love - and this pandemic is continuing to draw out this courtship process.” - New York Times

Created by: Marielle, Muriel & Martyna

0 Comments10 Minutes

Do Dating Apps take away the naturalness of human encounters?

May 28, 2020Group 4

by muriel.strasser@student.unisg.ch

Massimo’s and Constanza’s talk in the morning invited us to move our thoughts on a completely new level of abstraction: How can we relate our topic of Dating Apps to living root bridges? For sure, this sounds like an idiotic idea at first. However, when reflecting and brainstorming on that we actually found some parallels! When talking about those living root bridges Constanza and Massimo referred to artefactualness and naturalness – phenomena that can be transferred to Tinder and Co. as well.

Essentially the formation of human relationships is supposed to be something that evolves naturally; something that in the end opens up our inner core, our natural personality to someone else. However, it seems like online Dating Apps - merely working via superficial mechanisms like visual attraction - totally abolish this sense of naturalness. Can we still talk about a natural getting to know if we are allocated to each other based on artificial machine algorithms? If we try to create a desirable image of ourselves on our Dating App profile that might have got nothing to do any more with who we really are? If the encounter happens in a virtual space far from face-to-face communication?

We doubt it. It rather seems as if Dating Apps move human relationships from a natural to an artificial level of communication. Today’s presentation left us with inspiring mind games and led us to also think about alternative ways of how Dating Apps organize and develop. How do technology and users interact in a way that new, alternative or unintended uses of Dating Apps arise?

After a joint discussion we in fact found some answers! When it comes to the non-intended use of Dating Apps, we concluded there’s a variety of them. One can download the App to boost one’s self-confidence after a difficult break-up, or perhaps to verify one’s attractiveness on the “market”. Alternatively, Dating Apps are often used for business or financial purposes. For instance, it is common to see professionals looking for collaborations, such as modeling or photographing through the Apps. Moreover, we also noticed  that some users intend to utilise the app in order to promote their businesses or raise money. There are also people who schedule dates with strangers in order to benefit from free meals or drinks. There are plenty of hidden opportunities on dating portals, that, even if foreseen, were not intended by the founders at all. 

Changing the perspective, we also focused on how the innovative technology itself can be used alternatively. We thought that the ”matching” system introduced by Tinder has potential to be utilised on a larger scale. The functionality that it  brings, namely matching individuals from different samples based on their preference, is an opportunity for other businesses. For instance, the market of self-employed cleaning staff or language tutors could benefit. Simple tagging their key characteristics such as skills, availability, and offer, allows for sorting through the huge supply of service. As a result the matching algorithm enables a quicker decision-making, by just presenting the offers that are relevant or of interest. Alternatively, we also discussed applications of matching in non-human environments such as tools for easy pet adoption.

Today’s reflections and discussions revealed that the technology of Dating Apps has much wider implications than expected - it cannot only shape human behavior but also gives rise to applications that go far beyond the initial functionality of dating. 

By Marielle, Martyna & Muriel

0 Comments4 Minutes

The dangerous trade-off: Love or privacy

May 27, 2020Group 4

by maju15ae@student.cbs.dk

Love: The pay-off for risky data sharing

Today, the lecture inspired us to discuss the risk of sharing own private data with the dating apps. We noticed how particularly private and intimate is the data  available on Tinder for example. Not only it consists of all the generic information, but also it reveals the most discrete and intimate thoughts that we decide to share with the online partners. The abuse of this data is scary and definitely poses a big risk for using the apps. However, the potential pay-off is nonetheless significant. The vision of finding a life-long partner or even the mere experience of a fun date is usually so attractive that in return users are completely willing to share their data and somewhat give up their privacy. 

When it comes to the current circumstances, the changing environment and overwhelming uncertainty increases the motivation to find The One even more. We do not want to struggle in the difficult times on our own, hence we seek closure and support, also through the dating apps.

Dating Apps control our movement and feelings

Furthermore, we also discussed the different ways the dating apps control us. We concluded that prior to the pandemic, Tinder was rather incentivising people to go out and reach out to people in the real world. While now, the direction seems to be opposite - the app encourages people to stay at home, even though they may feel lonely. It helps them with self-isolation, through supplying social interactions inside one’s own home. Although, apart from the intended, and politically-correct use, some users resist this intended control. They schedule dates with strangers, disregarding the pandemic regulations.

Feelings are another human aspect that our technology can definitely control. The core purpose of the app is to evoke strong emotions, ranging from pride, excitement, interest, disgust, hate to even love. The algorithms in the app can also manipulate our feelings through curating the potential matches, adjusting their attractiveness, perhaps even the successful match ratio. Now, in the Corona times, where as we discussed before, everything is about the presence and mindfulness, we focus on our emotions to a bigger extent. Thus, especially now it is crucial to realise the dating apps’ influence on our emotions.

Briefing participants for the interview

Further action - What we did today ?

• Conducting desk research
• Briefing and interviewing participants for our questionnaire 
• Collecting and evaluating answers
• Narrowing down the scope of our topic

Created by: Marielle, Martyna and & Muriel

0 Comments3 Minutes

Dating Apps in times of Corona – A way back into love?

May 26, 2020Group 4

by muriel.strasser@student.unisg.ch

Defining the scope - Where do we stand?

Paula Bialski’s talk this morning encouraged us to look at our topic of dating apps from another perspective: not only are dating apps a way to seek love, affection and sex, but also can they be seen as a tool to reduce complexity of our daily lives – similar to the idea of techniques like Scrum reducing the complexity of software development as proposed by Paula. 

This idea helped us to narrow our topic down to specific elements we want to look at in the context of dating apps. For instance, how dating apps are in fact used to reduce uncertainties and complexity in times of Corona. Additionally – based on the lecturers’ inputs and our own thoughts – we’d like to investigate further how people present themselves via dating apps, if dating apps are in fact used as tools to manage anxieties in the current crisis, how we establish trust in such online settings, what is the intended purpose of using such apps and what other uses evolved throughout time. All these subquestions shall help us to find an answer to the overarching question:

How does the pandemic change the way dating apps organize us? 

Today we gained hands-on experience and deep-dived into the subject matter by conducting our chosen empirical approach.

Empirical Approach - How do we tackle the subject?

For the empirical approach, in a first step, we have developed a questionnaire that deals with various aspects of using dating apps. With regard to our interest in comparing usage between past and present, it was not very difficult to develop questions that are aimed precisely at this. We decided to move from general questions to more specific questions related to the current Corona pandemic. Since a public questioning of passengers on the street is a rather inappropriate idea, we will send the questionnaire to friends and acquaintances.

In a second step – the auto-ethnographic part – we used the dating app Tinder ourselves in order to examine how people present themselves and to check if we are able to observe changes compared to the time before Corona. Soon, it became clear that Corona as a prominent topic already took over Tinder: guys use the pandemic as a 

humorous element by posing with a bottle of Corona beer; they claim to look for a “quarantine buddy”; or simply utilize the topic as a “hook” for a potential conversation with matches. However, the overall manner of presenting oneself seems to remain the same: creating a desirable image of oneself (of rather one “ideal self”), no matter if real-life dates are in sight or not.

For us it is interesting to approach the phenomenon Tinder from a scientific approach, as it opened up new and fresh perspectives on dating apps. Not having one’s own goals in mind, but an empirical intention, led us to reflect more on ourselves, as well: What do we or what would we expect from the use of the App? Does or would our use of Tinder change given the current crisis? 

Various interesting ideas arose by conducting the auto-ethnographic approach and we already gained some revealing insights into the impact of dating apps on us at the time of the pandemic. We’re keen to elaborate more on that in the course of the next days!

Key research insights of today - What did we learn?

Based on the lecture and own research, our today’s discussion led us to a few interesting aspects of the dating apps. 

In regard to the lecture by Paula Bialski we looked into the crisis management ability of the apps as well as the phenomenon of establishing  offline trust via online tools. In our questionnaire we intend to inquire the users about these aspects, namely how does the app change their perception of trust and whether it reduces their stresses and anxiety. 

We discussed the intended purpose of the app, and quickly realised that currently there are so many variations of it. Starting from the self-esteem boost, through gathering local traveling insights, finding a talk buddy or even financial gains. 

Moreover, we hypothesised that thanks to the Pandemic the previously existing stigmatisation of this dating tool, might be reduced in the future. As singles are stuck at homes, Tinder is their only way of approaching strangers, hence the bad connotation or shame related to its usage may diminish. 

Next, our desktop research motivated us to think about the impact of the location on dating. The apps are associated with never ending supply of potential partners, as  we, through constant mobility, can always approach someone new, Tinder makes it even more possible. However, the current mobility ban limits the opportunities, even in the digital world. On Tinder users are bound by their location and left only with the locals. Yet actually, this particular app allows one to overcome this barrier through purchase of the premium account that allows for  free re-location of the virtual account, providing access to new possibilities. 

Finally, inspired by the New York Times article (Fisher, 2020) we discussed the current tendency to return to the slow life. As Corona limits so many of our opportunities, we tend to focus on the here and now.  Same applies to online dating - we have more time, not so much to talk regarding the smalltalk, and the limited number of profiles in the city. I.e we are somewhat forced to focus on the real conversation and connection. Hence, we hypothesize that the pandemic age could be the way back into real love. 

By Martyna, Marielle, Benedetta & Muriel

0 Comments7 Minutes

Dating Apps in the Pandemic

May 25, 2020Group 4

by maju15ae@student.cbs.dk

After gaining inspiring inputs in the morning lecture, we started with a generic brainstorming session in our group in order to identify a topic we want to investigate during the week. We chose a pragmatic approach by looking at the variety of topics that is covered by the papers each of us wrote. Given the condition that a link to the current pandemic needs to be given, some subjects appeared to be more suitable than others. As a result an interesting topic with high relevance to our current situation evolved: location data. However, soon we noticed that the topic of location might leave us with some troubles as the subject matter is quite broad. That’s why we deep-dived individually into research on devices, technologies and topics around „location“. We identified three different types of Apps that make use of location data and are particularly important in the context of the Corona pandemic at the same time: food delivery apps, contact tracing apps and dating apps. Finally, we decided to explore the topic of dating apps, such as Tinder or Bumble, as an example for reciprocal organization of humans and technologies. We believe that the topic offers potential to reveal interesting insights into the way how human needs, dating behavior and the formation of relationships are impacted by the pandemic.

We want to approach to the topic through various research methods. First of all, we want to find out what it does to people when they can now choose freely and how it affects social and sex life. Next, we would like to focus on the difference in the use of dating apps in the current situation and what drives the need of users? To find out, we want to move into the field ourselves, i.e. register in an app, as well as interview friends and acquaintances with dating app experience.

The global dating apps’ use has significantly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. At first glance it may seem surprising, since everyone is required to adhere to the social distancing rules. Although, in fact we found a few reasons why Dating Apps are  popular in particular nowadays. 

First of all, the simple fact that we are supposed to stay at home gives us more free time that can be devoted to dating. Taking into consideration the newly introduced video call features, the online dates are actually viable now. 

Secondly, the current circumstances expose us to loneliness -the quarantine, remote work, no social gatherings, closed social venues. Dating apps are a perfect way to seek closure with others, even if it is with strangers. In extreme lonely times it can perhaps be a mere tool to find a talk-buddy, not necessarily a romantic relationship. 

Finally, pandemic is characterised with huge uncertainty. Vast amount of people lose their jobs or have to cancel their future plans. This constantly changing environment may potentially bring a lot of anxiety. Dating apps are tools for seeking intimacy in a very structured, control and safe way. The swiping activity empowers you to chose among potential new acquaintances, and the popular “unmatch” feature allows for an immediate exit from any uncomfortable situation. 

0 Comments4 Minutes