Also what exactly is the control group here? How different is 79% from that of other demographics?

I'm in a different age cohort, and I would be very surprised if more than 1 in 5 of my friends were using dating apps as often as once a month.

It's hard to get the tone right with that kind of flirting.

我喜欢西瓜

The tone of this comment is making me think these aren't normal first date questions.

Imo when you're young and actively socializing constantly it doesn't make much sense to use an app for dating.

haha yeah, I'm definitely actively socializing...

True. I've never really used those apps. Well the one I did use one time I ended up having a one night stand which was a first for me and not my intention. I mean, I wanted to have sex, and did, but I wasn't expecting it if that makes sense.

Anyway, the next morning I had to do my one and only "well... I gotta go to work... so..." speech to the young woman. Clearly I fucked up something about how I said it, or didn't know what she wanted, and in any case even though that was well over 10 years ago I still roll that memory through my "cringe bank" in my mind. I legitimately felt bad. I still do.

Long way of saying the best relationship(s) I had, which went from friendship, to bf/gf and, people never believe this, but back to a friendship (after years of separation, granted) began offline, from chance encounters, and a mutual realization that we found each other attractive.

I've viewed, and apparently used them this way myself by accident, those apps as like "I want to bang. If we both swipe the thing we agree to probably bang." Which is fine. But it's not for me.

TLDR: I accidentally batted 100 with dating apps and retired early.

I'm talking out my ass here but it doesn't feel to me like young people have returned to socializing and finding dates mostly in-person. Or at least, it doesn't feel like the amount of IRL fraternizing going on has correspondingly increased to match the headline stat. Though the group of uni students is relatively small and self-selecting so maybe

Well, yeah, that's what I thought (I'm 378 years old) but I'm surprised Gen Z agree with you and me

I have thus far managed to avoid the hell of the dating app and I hope to never, ever, have to resort to it. it does help that as a communist I am so very very attractive.

https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.5964/ijpr.v3isupp2.78

Marriages resulting from the online matchmaking service were observed to have significantly higher scores for marital adjustment. We conclude that online matchmaking services based on predictive inference and proscribed selection can be observed to have a significant and meaningful impact on marital quality

https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1222447110

marriages that began on-line, when compared with those that began through traditional off-line venues, were slightly less likely to result in a marital break-up (separation or divorce) and were associated with slightly higher marital satisfaction among those respondents who remained married.

I remember the slightly gooder old days when OKCupid was the dominant dating "app" (because it was a website). You answered a ton of survey questsions ranging from serious philosophical and political question to silly personal preferences and weighed how important they were to you, then the website matched you with people who had similar values. You could write a big complicated profile if you wanted, upload some pictures. There were fun, silly quizes to take. It was actually designed to be user friendly and help you find people who had similar interests and values.

That was my experience years and years ago.

I don't even know what changed from there but I know it's gotten worse since the site was bought and rebought by larger and larger techbro corporations after I left. Actually successfully dating isn't as profitable as keeping people around, and they learned that well.

I remember liking OKcupid solely for the million questions because once you answer enough of them, you can just quick peek at your absolute deal breakers and be like "oh god you're a chud, next." Unfortunately I also am criminally terrible at picking up flirting and subtlety so when a girl started talking about a local kink event, I just was like "oh that sounds neat, have fun." Had a girl once just outright say "I'm flirting with you" and I still didn't know what to do. I've since made my peace with never touching a dating app again because they're just awful.

im older and have been in a committed relationship for over 15 years so im not an authority here or anything but every relationship ive ever had came from a friendship first

i think people are starting to understand that love isnt always some magic "struck by lightning" thing but rather something that blooms from healthy relationships with all kinds of people

if you are sociable and chill you can befriend people and sometimes one of those friendships just levels up, or they set you up with someone because you are cool, or you do that for them this is how it has been done in so many cultures for all of human history if it aint broke dont fix it

in my mostly male and male-presenting friend group, it seems to be split 50/50 in terms of who's had an okay time on them and who finds them to be a barren hellscape, and it doesn't really seem to correspond 1:1 with conventional attractiveness either. I think my friends who got on them before they became even further enshittified tend to have a higher opinion of them. FWIW I became single this year after almost 9 years in a relationship and I'm firmly in the hellscape camp.

(Also don't let one bad experience scare you off IRL connection, I really do think it's something special when it works out)

I met my wife on a dating site before it was bought several times over and enshittified each time. I lucked out by way of timing where the techbros didn't yet refine and perfect the process of making the site retain users as its priority over actually helping people find other people.

ive had positive experience with dating apps! it was a fun and easy way to flirt and meet people and im grateful for the experience. i learned a lot about myself and im better off for it.

I also have had an alright experience. I used it almost entirely for meeting people, with the goal of getting off of it (the conversation) asap.

I know that this is going to resemble an argument that the anti-science types make for how Big Pharma is suppressing the cure for cancer because a sick customer is a return customer but...

Dating apps are based on engagement. Engagement on a dating app is based on your being single (generally speaking) and feeling incapable of connecting with people outside of the app.

So you have this situation where punters use dating apps to connect with people and to find relationships and yet the design of the app exists in complete opposition to these aims as it requires that you stay single and to not connect with others.

With that in mind, the fact that your experience of dating apps was really negative and harmful shouldn't come as any surprise. You can look at it as if this is a reflection of some sort of personal deficit on your behalf but I'm not convinced tbh.

I think my experience of slot machines is similar to yours, and maybe as a metaphor this works well too, but I knew people who would enjoy playing slot machines. Or at least that's what they reported. I think I've played them twice in my life total, as in putting in a dollar and playing a couple of rounds and then walking away disaffected by the experience. (Disaffected in the true meaning of the word btw.)

Maybe it's because I'm autistic or something but I really hated the overstimulation, all the flashing lights and blaring sound and the background clamour. I couldn't understand how the game worked or the mechanics behind it and it left me feeling confused and uneasy. It was all frenetic and uncomfortable for me. If I stayed at it for more than a few minutes I'm sure it would have had some negative effects on me commensurate with how long I played it for. I suspect that slot machines are designed this way to make people on edge and kinda frantic to put them into a state which makes them susceptible to just one more game (and they are designed as elaborate and exquisitely refined Skinner boxes, of course.)

I don't think that there's something wrong with me personally that meant I had a negative experience with slot machines. I think they're weird, uncomfortable, exploitative machines. And I have a lot of sympathy for the people who enjoy them or who get addicted to them but I don't consider those people as having personal qualities that make them somehow better than I am for it.

Maybe there are few people who hit the jackpot with slot machines and another small group who truly enjoy them but I think they're few and far between.

Persistence is an admirable trait generally but persisting under conditions which are seriously harmful to your wellbeing is not. Maybe your experience of dating apps is a reflection of the fact that you're more aware of your own needs and you figured out that dating apps are bad for you, where someone who is more persistent would have continued to persevere despite the negative impacts on them?