Emily Brewster examines modern dating culture, looking at the normalisation of apps to date, rather than face-to-face interaction.

As far as we have come in seeing women for more than their relationship status in the past thirty years, single young women still titter and grimace in reluctant relatability to the character of Bridget Jones, who perpetually dreads the question: “how’s the love life?”. This is not, I’m sure I can speak for most, due to a desperate yearning for a partner but rather from the onslaught of unwarranted, unhelpful questions and suggestions, most frequently: “why don’t you get on Hinge? It’s how people meet these days you know!”.

The rapidity with which online dating apps are brought up, normally uninvited, signifies our societal reverence for them, resolving an otherwise fraught task of meeting suitors, the infallible route to finding love in the postmodern age. I must make clear I am not judgemental of anyone who uses online dating apps to make genuine connections, whether these be casual or longer term. What worries me, however, is that our generation’s ability to meet and communicate with potential romantic partners organically is deteriorating, with the increased reliance on effortlessly “swiping right” to meet your match. 

A couple of months ago, over dinner and too much wine in my flat, a girlfriend laughed as she recalled the mortifying encounter that had scarred her that afternoon; whilst shopping, she had “made eye contact” not once, not twice, but three times with a bloke she’d matched with on Hinge, as she darted around Sainsbury’s attempting to escape him. Looking around, I was surprised to learn that I was alone in my bewilderment as to why this was so traumatising for my friend, who normally had fantastic social skills and no qualms with small talk, even in somewhat awkward scenarios. Fazed, I asked why the unexpected run-in with someone she had matched with was so terrible; was it not a convenient opportunity to become actually acquainted? This query was met with a clamour of shock from around the table, the idea of our friend approaching someone whose virtual profile she had approved of simply scandalous. This revelation converted my mere disinterest in online dating into a stronger disdain, highlighting the industry’s corrosion of young people’s confidence to have normal, real-life interactions. Even when a mutual attraction has been confirmed by these apps, such painfully awkward in-person encounters show that the “keyboard warrior” is depressingly becoming ever more identifiable. 

More than this, it is genuinely troubling how common it is to see people flippantly flick through literally hundreds of profiles, “swiping left” after only a second’s glance for the vast majority of the poor creatures. Just as I had begun to think that judging a book by its cover was finally going out of fashion, dating apps have revitalised such glaringly shallow attitudes by basing matchmaking almost entirely on the sex-factor of someone’s favourite photo of themself. Sure, the last person you brought home with you after a heavy night out may have not been some Adonis, but most likely there will have been an actual conversation, a laugh or even a smile that drew you to them (maybe not always, we’ve all been there). The hollow superficiality of selecting romantic interests, at least initially, solely on physical appearance seems to me a depressing indictment of our ill-guided perfectionism in today’s world, leading women to cull what could have been a great match for them because he missed the six-foot mark on his Hinge profile. 

From where I’m sat, we need to consider whether online dating culture is cultivating harmful attitudes around forming romantic connections, both in its destruction of face-to-face social interactions and from the ruthless perfectionism it facilitates by using physical appearance to market people. For a generation who spent formative years under COVID restrictions, to the significant detriment of their emotional development and social skills, dating apps provide the comfortable security of virtuality that circumvents the need for sometimes awkward encounters. However, for all their perks of convenience, our reliance on platforms like Hinge or Tinder risks damaging our natural capacity to form organic relationships of a romantic, or indeed platonic nature. Whether you use these apps or not, though, just please don’t be the girl who runs away from a sexy boy in the canned goods aisle in Sainsbury’s.