Dating apps have become a part of any average student’s social life. Even if you’ve never used them yourself, you definitely know someone who has. I was curious to find out how the student population actually feels about them, so I asked some Edinburgh Uni students to tell me about their experiences and opinions on dating apps, to help me outline their key advantages and disadvantages.
One student said: “I matched with a guy on Hinge and then I saw him in my lecture – as soon as I spoke to him in person I realised I would’ve never gone for him if it wasn’t online.” As students we are surrounded with other people in our age category all the time — and chances are the people we surround ourselves with have similar views and interests to us. If we’re also using dating apps to find this same category of people, at some point the two worlds will converge. Specifically at uni, the online dating world is not mutually exclusive from our social interactions. That being said, it can lead us to making misinformed decisions based on the surface level information we get from a profile.
“It can be fun, but I wouldn’t want to tell people I met my partner on an app,” a student told me, who claims they only use dating apps for casual dating. Casual dating at university has always existed in some way or another, but apps like Tinder or Hinge let users declare their dating intentions on their profile, which can save both time and awkwardness, but also encourage casual and non-commitment dating which contradicts the marketing of these platforms such as the “designed to be deleted” slogan. This can perpetuate the stereotype that online dating isn’t ideal for serious relationships.
Online dating also makes dating more accessible to many individuals from different communities, as well as people who simply struggle with being socially open. Dating apps let people know if you’re interested automatically. Specifically for students who are LGBTQ+, having their orientation be publicly visible, and being able to only see people of their orientation, can remove the uncomfortable guessing of social cues. One student echoed this, saying: “I think dating apps are good especially for queer relationships, as on campus you don’t always know if the person you like is gay or not.”
“People don’t come up to each other anymore, your best chance is to meet someone online,” said one student who admits to using Hinge sporadically. Online dating awards us with a sense of anonymity that dating “out in the wild” just doesn’t. You can reject or accept someone without ever speaking to them. I think this is a big part of why students seem to lean more towards the online approach. It is not that the dating app is our only option, it is just that it’s the easiest one.
I think the problem people seem to have with dating apps is actually the main problem with all online advancements — it is that dating is just another part of our lives which now requires a lot less effort.
Photo by Alexander Sinn on Unsplash.