SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the post-traumatic-swipe-disorder dept.
Are 'swipe left' dating apps bad for our mental health?
Dating apps have taken the world by storm, but has the trend for swiping right or left to like or reject potential matches contributed to many people's unhappiness and low self-esteem?
Following the end of her last relationship, Kirsty Finlayson, 28, did what many people do - she turned to dating apps to find love. But the incessant swiping and the stream of small-talk conversations that soon fizzle out left her feeling dejected. "Dating apps have definitely increased my anxiety," admits Kirsty, a solicitor who lives in London. "It fuels the idea of a disposable society where people can match, date once, and not give it much effort," she says. "I find it difficult to distinguish between those who are just using it as a way of passing time on their commute or ego-boosting and those who actually are looking for something serious."
[...] Despite the huge popularity of dating apps - and the millions of success stories worldwide - many users report that some apps make them feel low and experience self doubt. [...] Such experiences echo the results of a study two years ago by the University of North Texas, which found that male Tinder users reported lower levels of satisfaction with their faces and bodies and lower levels of self worth than those not on the dating app.
Trent Petrie, professor of psychology at the University of North Texas and co-author of the research, says: "With a focus on appearance and social comparisons, individuals can become overly sensitised to how they look and appear to others and ultimately begin to believe that they fall short of what is expected of them in terms of appearance and attractiveness. "We would expect them to report higher levels of distress, such as sadness and depression, and feel more pressures to be attractive and thin."
Earlier this year a poll of 200,000 iPhone users by non-profit organisation Time Well Spent found that dating app Grindr topped a list of apps that made people feel most unhappy, with 77% of users admitting it made them feel miserable. Tinder was in ninth place.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @03:19AM (1 child)
Do a dating service that is funded entirely by a fixed mark-up on verification of things that people wish to claim.
If you can verify something for free, do so. Various common things can be standardized and cheap. Custom verification could get very expensive indeed. In any case, stick to a modest percentage, such as 10%.
You could verify:
height, weight, salary, control of a specific email address, hormone levels, citizenship, degree, ability to bench press, IQ, lack of cancer-promoting genes, lack of an STD, presence of a foreskin, presence of a hymen, expected remaining life according to life insurance statistical data, criminal record, pure ancestry, tribal affiliation, house is clean, owns a Ferrari, able to drive, has all natural teeth, control of a specific phone number, geographic presence in a particular area, actually looks like the posted photos, owns a business, served in the navy, owns 17 guns, has a pet rat, has still-married parents, isn't on welfare, is not a bastard child, is a confirmed Catholic...
Verifying control of an email address is nearly trivial. Other stuff might mean flying a lawyer or doctor out to investigate. The markup is always the same fixed percentage, except that a fraction of a cent isn't worth charging for.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @03:30AM
Hey, I've got a Ferrari!
https://www.ebay.com/i/253637261261 [ebay.com]