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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: 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.

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  • (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!

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