Key points
- A survey showed the majority of people believe that Tinder is a hookup app.
- The main reason people report using Tinder is that it’s popular and trendy.
- Among those looking for romance, people are more likely to use Tinder to look for a relationship than a hookup.
Since its launch in 2012, the dating app, Tinder, has received quite a bit of publicity. It’s one of the most popular lifestyle apps with over 10 million daily active users.
For the uninitiated, Tinder is a mobile dating app that allows users to locate other singles in their geographic area. Users fill out a brief bio and upload photos. They can then start viewing photos of other users who match their age, gender, and location criteria. Users swipe right if they like what they see and swipe left if they don’t. They are then notified of any matches, where both people swiped right on each other’s profiles. Thus, users can quickly view hundreds of local singles and decide with a quick swipe of their finger if they’re interested or not.
In the popular media, Tinder very much has the reputation of being a “hookup” app, designed to facilitate fleeting sexual encounters. At the peak of the Tinder hype, an article in Vanity Fair announced that Tinder represented the “dawn of the dating apocalypse.” Whereas others in the popular media have suggested that many use the app in search of love. Continue reading Research explores why people use Tinder and what kinds of connections they make