The New Life of Online Dating

It’s no surprise that our dating lives have taken a huge hit this past year. From having to live at home for five months with little to no contact with people in the real world, we’ve become out of practice in maintaining a social life. With the pandemic still being so prominent, it’s challenging to connect with people even when we’re back on campus attempting to live our lives as they once were.

Dating apps are nothing new. They’ve been around for years, creating a platform for those who don’t have time to mingle in the real world and find it easier to do so online. One of the most iconic dating websites, Match.com, has been around since 1995 when the internet was still a relatively new phenomenon. The launch of Tinder in 2012 created a whole new type of dating, as well as the birth of casual hookup culture that has dominated the 21st century. We all know that dating apps have, for better or worse, changed the way that we date and create relationships. The idea of swiping left or right on someone based on a profile is ridiculous, but in 2020, this concept doesn’t seem as crazy anymore.

Elon student Julia Rubell has had Tinder since 2019, but she only first downloaded it as a joke.

“My friends and I mainly downloaded it just to see what boys were on it in our hometown,” Julia says. “I used to download and delete it a lot, even before COVID became a thing.”

These apps have always had negative connotations, as someone who used a dating app was seen as desperate or just looking for something casual, but it seems something has changed in the last few months. According to BBC News, “Tinder users made 3 billion swipes worldwide on March 29th, the most the app has ever recorded in a single day.”

Dating apps always have a drawback, and the presence of a pandemic hasn’t seemed to change the negative aspects to them, as Julia points out, “Dating apps are useful, and not useful. But right now, I’d say they’re definitely more useful than ever before.” Julia explains how Tinder played a role in meeting her current boyfriend in the beginning of the semester: “We met in my history class, but I got his Snapchat through Tinder because we matched, and that’s how we first started talking.”

This semester makes Tinder, and other apps like it, more useful now than ever before because of social distancing. “There’s really no other way to meet people,” Julia says. For people who are too afraid to make that connection in-person, Tinder is a great platform to use and meet people on. “But I have been cat-fished before on Tinder, so that’s always a risk to look out for when using dating apps,” Julia warns.

So, have dating apps become more popular now that COVID exists? Julia says absolutely. She believes having an outlet like Tinder, Bumble, and other apps is more important and necessary than ever before.

“The way people used to meet was always in person, going to parties, classes, hangouts, but now that all of that is pretty much gone, there’s almost no other way to meet someone than through dating apps now,” Julia says. “Even if it’s just a casual thing, dating apps are a significant part of keeping up and meeting people during COVID.”

Although some may despise these types of apps, there’s no denying that they’re a safe and easy way to casually meet someone. With the risk of COVID, everything has turned online, including people’s dating lives, and because these apps have already been out in the world for a number of years, this makes the transition to online dating that much easier.