Can you find your true love on dating apps?
By: Cao Thao Uyen Nguyen
Tags: Finding Love, True Love, Online Dating, Dating App

Can you find your true love on dating apps?

Have you ever downloaded a dating app and then deleted it right away? Have you ever met someone on a dating app and wondered if he or she could be your true love?

Dating apps — Looking for love online

Nowadays, dating is more accessible thanks to the increasing number of dating apps. Dating apps provide users a stack of picture-based profiles to choose from. The user swipes right to like and swipes left to dislike and move on. When both users swipe right on each other’s image, “they are matched!” and begin their conversation. Your lover is just a swipe away!

Online dating allows users to meet a wide range of potential partners within their social network circle, so they will have more opportunities to find their better matches. However, dating apps give people the chance to find their true love as well as old and new anxieties about risk, self-image, and love.

It is impossible to find true love on dating apps?

Source: Giphy.com

University of Wisconsin Researchers found that daters who chose from fewer options were happier with their match than those who had more options because people who chose from a large pool of choices were more likely to “reverse their choice” and look for a new match instead. Choosing your partner from dating apps can be like go shopping. You have so many choices and can try on everything but you end up buying nothing. This feeling can be described as The Paradox of Choice which is people get overwhelmed and run away with nothing when you give them too much choice.

Moreover, dating apps emphasize looks. We attract others based on the first impression that we show off on the profile. The first thing we notice is the profile picture and then dismiss people based on their appearances. Therefore, the appearances on the dating apps can put a lot of pressure on the users. They may feel self-conscious about their faces and their bodies.

The ugly truth about online dating is people can lie about their looks, career and relationship status on their profile. People tend to have a perfect profile on the app, so they feel like they need to lie about their online presences to be stand out in the dating pool. Moreover, users can lie about their relationship status to date multiple people at the same time which is common on dating sites.

Dating apps open the door to us meeting new people. However, if we spend too much time obsessing and building up our profiles, we will miss out on the main point of using these technologies, which is meeting people. The more energy you put into online dating apps, the less energy you will put into meeting people in the real world. A strong relationship should be built on face-to-face conversations, not through the screen because love happens in person not online.

Is there still hope for the success of dating apps?

However, we can still believe in dating online success. The research found that 20% of men and 13% of women said they had found a romantic partner online. I have two best friends and they both met their partners on dating apps. One found her love on Tinder and the other found it on Bumble. They and their partners are QUT students and have similar interests. Both couples have been together for more than one year. From my friends’ experience, I had decided to do the unthinkable on dating online. At least, we should give a try?

I think the journey of finding love’s result depends on people’s experience and their choices of partners. We cannot say it is possible or not to find love online but we can try. Then through our experience with dating apps, we can find out that we should find love online or in an old-fashioned way? It is our decision.