Hundreds of dating apps are in the app store if you download and use them, you will find most of the user populations are the young people. Some dating apps’ users population are mainly college students which are under age 27 and high school students as well. This raises a question: in college, it is easy for students to meet other people from different majors and studies. Why do so many people still choose to make friends online?
Regardless of the time spent during the pandemic, those reasons may be lead people to choose to make friends online: the person is not talkative, has no confidence in his/her appearance, has a relatively ordinary life, and so on. However, when I am using the Internet, I find that it is not always true. There are many people who have a decent and positive life. And they are also quite talkative and active. In addition to this, the users that use the dating apps are not directly related to social skills in real life. So why do college students use dating apps?
I spent the previous summer break to experience and search for college students that choose to use dating apps.
Pursue purposeful relationships
This is probably the most intuitive reason. During the pandemic, it is difficult to cultivate deep friendships. Dating apps are considered a quick matchmaking channel. The built-in question system also allows college students to have a direct and appropriate opportunity to talk about topics that are usually difficult to share with classmates, such as feelings and values.
Find friends outside of your life circle
Dating apps are indeed overcome many barriers. It is relatively easy to say hello to people who do not overlap in different schools, majors, and life circles. When chatting with the person that you had a match with, you are also getting to know his/her age, life, habit, and so on. Such an experience is rare in real life which makes me think it is the greatest advantage of dating apps. You then have a chance to meet different people through changing values and opinions by texting, voice-calling, video-calling. And possibly you would have a chance to meet up and hang out with the ‘potential friend’.
You feel bored during the pandemic? Are dating apps worth to use?
It is not difficult to find the pursuit of today’s college students. They hope to skip the time-consuming process of making friends from unfamiliar to familiar and create another shortcut. During the pandemic, social life is almost banned. The way of making friends online seems to be a good solution. Many people hesitate when faced with the so-called ‘fast-food relationship’ or the past experience of using the dating apps. Is it worth trying? My answer is, “it’s worth it”.
The dating apps have been labeled with many tags and impressions such as ‘friends with benefits’ and “catfish”. People who are not willing to try also pointed out that they think it is unsafe and dangerous to know people from the Internet. Personally think it is normal and necessary to have such doubts, but keeping doubts does not conflict with trying to make online friends and even everyone who tries must keep such doubts.
During the previous summer break, if you asked me “Have you ever met someone who was unsuspecting?” Then the answer is yes. However, I don’t think the Internet is more dangerous than the real world because people with unpredictable intentions also exist in the real world. Sometimes, I even think that the screen is an alternative shield. When I feel uncomfortable going offline is also dangerous. It is important to stay vigilant and protect yourself. To sum up, this principle applies to the Internet as well as social networking in the real world. In short, the Internet is the second society. All kinds of people exist in the apps and by our side physically.
I think the whole point of dating apps is that both sides of the other person that they are open to dating. Sure, you could go to a bar, try and talk to someone and hope it clicks but I think knowing that the other person is open to it, is the biggest push for why a student would use a dating app
I think dating apps are really accessible for people and therefore many students use them. Especially with the pandemic, people couldn’t go out, and therefore dating apps were the way to meet new people and go on dates. From what I gathered from my friends who use dating apps, they use them to go on dates for fun and they’ll just see how it goes. They are not going on there with the intention of finding a real relationship but they don’t rule out that option either. I think, from what I’ve seen in my surroundings, apps like Tinder enforce the hookup culture that exists among students our age. There are of course people who do want to find real relationships on dating apps and in my opinion, there are certain apps that have more seriousness to them to find relationships than others who are more hookup-related.
I personally haven’t heard of people on dating apps with the intention to make only friendships, but there are also apps for that!
I think that dating apps have one more important advantage over meeting people in real life: as soon as you start feeling uncomfortable you can just unmatch them and have them disappear from your life forever without any awkwardness. As long as it stays in the online it’s practically risk-free (excluding all the stalker cases obviously).
I think dating sites mainly help with easily finding someone you might like, who is also open to dating as well. In real life, it is sometimes pretty hard, as sometimes people seem to like you, while you are not interested, and sometimes you see someone, but you are not sure if that person is single? Interested in you? Interested in dating at all? Next to that, I think it is more accessible, as, in real life, I would never just walk to a handsome person and start to chat (even though I am fairly talkative).
In my opinion, in date apps, the way you judge whether a person is suitable for you is the first impression, i.e., the photo they uploaded on their homepage. So it’s more about, like you said in the article, keeping a superficial relationship, and they don’t take it seriously. If you see them as a way to spend your time, I think it’s risk-free.
Hey Kelly, thanks for such an insightful blog post! Drawn to the question you posed at the start, ‘‘why are so many people still choosing to make friends online?’ I was able to find a lot of solidarity with the points raised for why people choose to use dating apps. Resonating with some of the comments above, the ease of accessibility is by far one of the biggest incentives to using dating apps. Whilst I agree that the Internet is no less dangerous than the real world, it is precisely its ease of accessibility that many come to ‘trust’ the Internet and potentially find themselves in uncomfortable situations with people they’ve met online. It’s worth exercising the same amount of caution online as you would in physical life and choosing the ‘right’ kind of dating app – one that matches your expectations and needs/intentions.