Tinder, Happn, Lovoo – you name it. Dating and romance today are very different from what it was 10 years or 30 years ago. Buckle up for a coffee-infused excursion into romance and technology.
I recently read Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari where he talks about typical heterosexual romance of middle-class, uni-educated people and how technology influenced and changed how we date and have relationships. Gender equality, change in demographics, life expectancy, economic development, etc obviously changed the way we meet our significant other. But so does technology and it does so even before we start dating. Every smart device with applications installed like Tinder is basically a 24/7 on demand single bar right at your fingertips.
Such applications largely lowered the barriers to enter the dating market. It is easier and more convenient than ever to meet someone or to start a conversation. (Forbes, 2013) We can hide behind a user name or a phone number, shoot out an unlimited number of text messages without even having to do our hair or dress up nicely and leave the house. Before the introduction of apps that enable us to meet others online, we had to go out and introduce ourselves. Charm mattered and so did how you approach the other person to introduce yourself.. Your grandparents might have met at the local pub or at the farmers market. Your parents might have met at high school or at the annual Christmas charity event.. However, the rise of the internet along with other globalisation trends, enabled us to tap into the single market with a double-tap. The virtual singles bar is accessible from anywhere at anytime and this comes with greater convenience but also leaves some of us with quite some emotional distress.
As a result, the barriers to entry are much lower than only 10 years ago, which is said to make daters careless and wasteful with their approaches to potential new mates. To examine this phenomenon, Ansari together with sociology professor Eric Klinenberg from New York University conducted statistical analysis of data and hosted focus groups and interviews to find out what people actually desire when it comes to dating but also how they eventually date. Turns out there is quite a big mismatch. Constant access to a single market that is larger than ever, makes it harder for us to settle for one person because what if we would meet someone even better? Back in the days – and with that I mean the generations before the millennials – people were most likely to marry someone who lives within walking distance from their childhood home. Technology opens the door to a much broader dating market but also emotional distress and a whole new kind of anxiety. Waiting for a response to your text, you and your BF drafting the ultimate text or phenomenons like ghosting simply did not exist 10 years ago.
Another tex-invention that has wrecked (potential new) relationships is texting. Women receive hundreds of mostly carelessly drafted messaged like “heyy whatsup?” and men are surprised if they do not even get a reply. Texting compared to a real face to face conversation or a classic phone call gives you a minute, 10 minutes or 2 days to draft the perfect sweet response or the ultimate witty comeback text. Face to face conversations and also phone calls require you to immediately (unless you want things to be awkward) respond to what the other person said. Texting decouples us from the other person and Ansari (2016) also describes texting as “a medium that facilitates flakiness and rudeness and many other personality traits that would not be expressed in a phone call or an in-person interaction”. This is no the most flattering light that shines upon messaging services. And yes, you probably have your very own personal example where texting went wrong and where in hindsight, you see that you never be in this hot mess you are now if only you would have had a personal conversation about the subject matter. It has never been normal to constantly talk with your potential date, social media and smart phones allow us to be more in touch with people who are away but in return made us talk less to the people around us. Constantly checking our phones, waiting for responses and wild scenarios about “Last seen”-time stamps and seen messages, for which we still await a response drive anxiety and emotional stress. This constant online availability tricks us into believing that the sips of connection we experience is actually like real bonding, which it isn’t. (Wallstreet Journal, 2015)
Yes, we cannot deny that technology changed the way we date. But I believe that it is up to us if we let it change for the worse or the better. It offers more opportunities to meet more people than ever but also offers a whole new medium for misunderstandings and seemingly deep virtual connections. To sum this up, maybe all these apps for dating should be more see as introduction-services rather than dating portals. So get out there, meet people and sit on rooftops and talk about your favourite childhood memories.
Feel free to share some online romance nightmares and critical thoughts on the topic.
Ansari, A. (2016). Modern Romance. Turtleback Books.
Forbes. (2013). Five Ways Technology Has Allegedly Ruined Dating. [online] Available at: https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/01/14/five-ways-technology-has-allegedly-ruined-dating/&refURL=https://www.google.nl/&referrer=https://www.google.nl/#d2848067052e [Accessed 9 Oct. 2017].
Wallstreet Journal. (2017). Is Technology Making People Less Sociable?. [online] Available at: https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-technology-making-people-less-sociable-1431093491 [Accessed 9 Oct. 2017].
Like in many other areas of digitalization, the apps for dating have brought some negative side effects like people sending unwanted messages, the ghosting phenomenon or benching. Benching is when a person disappears from the radar for a while and then suddenly pops up again with a sweet message, then disappears again and repeat this process like nothing happened. Then you are being kept in suspense, and it is not clear what the reason is. Maybe he or she is just busy. You are not sure if you two are actually going to meet in person. It could be a tender hearted person that finds it hard to end the ‘relation’ and does not want to hurt somebody. More likely it gives a person an ego boost to know that he/she has somebody to fall back on, have a plan B when things don’t turn out well with others.
This phenomenon is enabled by digitalization and wouldn’t work in an analog society. To be very honest I recognize this phenomenon with myself. Of course this is asocial and egoistic behavior, but I think because the message functions in (dating) apps make it so easy, it happens quickly. I think an important reason is that you don’t really know the person so the empathy for him/her is low.