Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @01:11AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @01:11AM (#732358)

    Based on what I see around me, it appears that the women find the "nice-guy provider types" boring; their only use being a charge-card charger and general payer of bills.

    We are in competition with the Government on that level, and no way to win that one. The government has all sorts of safety nets in place as long as the woman can keep her babymaker running. SNAP cards, WIC cards, EBT, and all sorts of Social Services, backup when the bad boy won't provide anything more than a romp in the hay.

    People like me are taxed to pay for it.

    Personally, I feel its futile to compete. Having a female companion to me is like trying to maintain a nice car in a bad neighborhood. Everybody is always trying to steal it. And I simply do not have the time, energy, or resources to maintain the "attraction system" running 24/7 to try to foment and keep a woman's interest.

    Its like constantly preparing for interview, then in interview, but someone else gets the job, because he will do things I have ethical problems with doing.

    Yes, I have "given up". I would like companionship. I have lots of animals. I have lots of porn. But I do not feel that I ( or anyone else as far as that goes! ) has the resources to keep her happy. Don't take my word for it.... documentation of the wealth angle is all over the supermarket tabloids. No amount of money is enough.

    Paid sex is meaningless to me, as is "met in a bar" sex. Its companionship I am after, and I really do not care if its male, female, gay, transgender, whatever. My dog is a great companion, sex is not a factor. But it looks to me like it stops there. I feel I have an enormous media machine running wooing everyone that their present companion is not good enough, and go meet and greet someone else... especially if there is a cash register on the premises. And I feel about as helpless as a dad trying to keep his daughter clean of hounding testosterone filled adolescent boys in a free-for-all party with no chaperones.

    Based on what I have seen, its not really a problem for humanity, but it is a problem for me. I feel its kinda backwards to how a farmer may want to breed docility into his livestock, while we seem to be breeding it out of the bourgeoisie.

    We can continue this breeding program as long as our Government can print up the money to fund it. And leave them to figure out how to control the new breed of livestock they have thus bred.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +2  
       Interesting=1, Informative=1, Total=2
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   2