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posted by martyb on Saturday September 08 2018, @03:21AM   Printer-friendly
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.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Saturday September 08 2018, @05:03AM (4 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Saturday September 08 2018, @05:03AM (#732052) Journal

    Rejection? That's life. I've had plenty of chats go horribly wrong, dates that were disasters, and dates that were meh.

    On the evening that Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Uranus, I was walking fast, hurrying back to the lobby in the dorms to watch. A lovely girl fell in step beside me and asked what I was doing. I said, in all innocence, "I'm going to see Uranus tonight!" At that time I was not aware of all the puns around that name. She vanished into the girls' dorm without asking for or leaving me any contact info, and I never saw her again. No doubt she was ignorant of planetary astronomy, and thought the worst of what she heard.

    Another one that might have been a mean joke was the phone call from a mysterious woman who acted as if she knew me and I knew her. I had no idea who she was and I didn't recognize her voice. I made polite conversation and listened and listened, hoping she'd mention some names or events or something to clue me in, but she never did. She called back the next night, and I tried again to pick up something, anything, but no. I wondered how long this could go on before I blundered, and said something that would reveal I had no idea who I was talking with. I had already waited far too long to just ask who she was without it being very embarrassing, but I finally did ask. Click. Never heard from her again.

    A weird one was this woman who evidently called men in the dorms more or less at random-- not hard to do as dorm phones all had the same area code and prefix. So there was no pretending we knew each other. But that too soon ended badly. I said something a little too geeky for her tastes and she asked if I was a nerd, as if that was a bad thing. Oh shit, now what do I say? Trying to console myself that I wouldn't be happy with a woman who thinks nerds are uncool, I confessed that yes, yes I am a nerd. Click.

    Lot of single women are very skittish and anxious, seeing the world as full of creeps, perverts, criminals, rapists, misogynists, male chauvinist pigs, and plain sexist assholes who just can't believe women aren't mentally inferior. While most women are not blatant gold digging material girls, they all have tendencies in that direction. Women and men both make hasty and wrong judgments of people based on their cars. All they see is how new and expensive, or not, your car is. The people who make such hasty, superficial judgments miss a lot of great catches. A dating app that entices people by hinting that it will weed out the bad matches nice and fast, saving the dater time, is bound to throw out a lot of babies with that bathwater and inadvertently help hurt a lot of feelings.

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Saturday September 08 2018, @05:46AM

    by anubi (2828) on Saturday September 08 2018, @05:46AM (#732064) Journal

    They would sure look the other way if I came around wouldn't they. Old diesel van.

    But you know, that thing would take a lot of trips to our national parks, room for the kids and animals. And be tolerant of messes and accidents. You know, puppies and kids grow by leaks and bounds.

    A child playing and striking the van with his bike or toy? What? Yet another dent? Along with all the rest? Oh well, it still runs fine. I would rather spend my time with other things rather than fussing over a little scratch here and there. Besides, if she wants the kind of guy that stuff like that matters so much to, then she better not get old! She'll be traded in just as fast as last year's model too!

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
  • (Score: 2) by canopic jug on Saturday September 08 2018, @08:39AM (1 child)

    by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Saturday September 08 2018, @08:39AM (#732089) Journal

    Another one that might have been a mean joke was the phone call from a mysterious woman who acted as if she knew me and I knew her. I had no idea who she was and I didn't recognize her voice. [...]

    Jokes can be mean.

    One joke was to call soon after the door shut and say two words, "paternity suit", if some bro had a chick in his room.

    A nasty one was when a friend once really did not like one particular guy and so when she found out he had blacked out from alcohol one weekend she waited until Thursday to call him, without identifying herself. She started immediately with how he was going to call for the weekend but she just couldn't wait and would call first. Without giving any details at all she went on about how special it was to meet him and how they really connected over what he had said to her, etc, etc. She played him for a few minutes until he made some mistake and then she called him on it and turned on him like a harpy, getting more hysterical as she went on about how cruel it was for him to have played her like that and said all those things to her if he hadn't meant them, hinting that some physical romance had taken place as well, and how she could see know he was just using her, etc, etc, going off into tears before sobbing into the phone and hanging up. It shook him up rather well.

    --
    Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
    • (Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday September 09 2018, @04:07AM

      by anubi (2828) on Sunday September 09 2018, @04:07AM (#732390) Journal

      "paternity suit"

      That was no joke! That was fair warning!

      --
      "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10 2018, @07:11AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10 2018, @07:11AM (#732680)

    Lot of single women are very skittish and anxious, seeing the world as full of creeps, perverts, criminals, rapists, misogynists, male chauvinist pigs, and plain sexist assholes

    Same applies for women? Men and women are rather the same in this department of weirdness and creepiness. It's just they are playing sometimes a little different game. So you have to be careful too.