Dating apps are a perennial topic of conversation on online forums and dating and relationship websites like evanmarckatz.com.
And whether you like (or at least keep an open mind about them) or not, dating apps like Tinder and Bumble are here to stay.
Advocates argue that these apps can minimize, if not totally eliminate plenty of the hassles associated with both conventional and online dating. There’s no point claiming that.
The benefits of using dating apps
Whether you have used a dating app before or not, you will agree that traditional dating has its pitfalls.
Tinder and similar apps have become popular, especially in recent years, for a few good reasons.
For starters, most of these apps are free. All you need to have is a smartphone. Download an app, create a profile, and you can begin looking for potential matches and dates.
In a fast-paced world where everyone is busy, these apps give singles practically everything they want – convenience.
It is no understatement to say that a dating app like Tinder has gamified people’s search for love and relationships.
And that is not an entirely bad thing, especially if you are trying to keep things casual.
How these apps might be ruining your love life
But along with these benefits come with a few downsides, which can hurt your chances of finding the right person, especially if your goal is to find a healthy, long-term relationship.
You aren’t meeting real people
True, it can be exhilarating to find hot people on a dating app. Or even better, matching up with one.
But the truth is, looking and matching up with these people can leave you confused and overwhelmed.
That’s because you aren’t exactly getting to know these people. At best, you’re meeting a version of them.
That’s because dating apps are designed to skip some of the steps associated with offline dating or even conventional online dating on websites.
The absence of fleshed-out profiles means that your goal is to attract the most number of potential dates in the quickest way possible.
You get more bad dates
The absence of detailed dating profiles means that you are more likely to get into bad dates with awful people. Attractive, but possibly bad dates.
The main reason behind that is that longer profiles serve as a screening mechanism. Although dating profiles are far from perfect, they’re a good starting point, especially in online dating.
True, you can never get to know a real person just by looking at a dating profile, even one that is posted on the best dating apps or websites. But at least, the chances of going out on a date with an awful guy take a sharp nosedive.
You become reliant on looks
If there are no dating profiles available, then you have no other recourse but to rely on looks. And that’s well and good if you are looking for a casual relationship.
But if your goal is to match with someone who can be a potential partner in a committed and long-term relationship, dating apps are a poor choice.
Using a dating app, especially one anchored on dating for looks, creates a vicious cycle, making you more frustrated than before you started using these.
There’s no real emotional investment
Having plenty of choices is not bad, even if you are looking for a serious relationship.
But if the primary mode of communication between you and the person you’ve matched up with is texting, you aren’t likely to establish a genuine connection.
And worse, along with messages from matches, you’ll have to prepare for unsolicited messages, dick pics, and ghosting. Those come along with the gamification of dating.
Furthermore, the absence of real communication means that you or your match can mean that both of you are texting other people as well.
The best dating apps – boon and bane
Dating apps are designed to solve some of the problems associated with traditional and online dating. And that’s not a bad goal.
But in the process of solving these woes, dating apps created an entirely new set of problems, some of which the developers may have not even thought of during the design process.
There’s no denying that these apps are a boon to countless singles seeking to make a connection with other people.
But that doesn’t mean that you have to rely solely on these apps just to get a date. You don’t have to passively accept these as part and parcel of these dating tools.
A better approach
With these apps, you have to take the good with the bad. That doesn’t mean that these are the only options that you have.
At the end of the day, if you are looking for love, you have to make yourself available to the most quality men.
Instead of relying solely on these apps, consider exploring other platforms. You might end up finding what you are searching for there.