It is estimated that the average American searches for love online it will scan almost 4,000 times on a dating app before finding a romantic partner. That number is slightly lower for Gen Z (about 3,500 swipes) while it’s much higher for Boomers, who are predicted to swipe over 6,000 times on average before finding a partner.
All this time scanning on dating apps definitely adds up! Globally, users spend a an average of 35 minutes on dating apps every day, but of course this varies greatly from person to person, with some spending large chunks of their day drifting away.
So how does all this swiping affect us and our mental health? And what happens when our sweep yields only a few matches against a ton? Let’s explore what the data says.
The effects of excessive sliding
A study by a group of communication scholars at the University of Vienna investigated how excessive swiping on dating apps is related to (a) upward social comparison (i.e., comparing yourself to others who look more attractive or better), (b) fear of being single, and (c ) the choice overload partner. Their sample included 464 people under the age of 25, all of whom had experience using dating apps.
Participants were asked how often they use dating apps, their compulsion to keep swiping, and their approach to swiping on dating apps. The authors distinguished between two general approaches to dating app swiping: assessment methodwhich is when a person thinks critically about their decision to swipe right versus left and motion modewhich happens when people swipe based on just gut feelings and visceral reactions to profiles.
“Excessive” scanning was defined as scanning that was compulsive in nature. You can think of it as being mentally busy looking at as many profiles as possible and having a hard time stopping.
The researchers found that excessive swiping behaviors were significantly associated with upward social comparison, fear of being single, and mate selection overload. In other words, dragging a lot on dating apps increased participants’ tendency to compare themselves to others they see as having a higher “status,” which is likely to negatively affect one’s self-esteem when few matches are made. Those who overscan also appeared to be overwhelmed by the number of potential mates, raising fears of long-term celibacy.
It is important to note that these negative effects were not inherent to all dating app users. They probably came up just for the excessive swipers. Furthermore, the results did not depend on whether people were dragging in evaluation mode as opposed to locomotive mode. The takeaway? Dating app use appears to take a toll on people’s mental health and well-being, but only when app use becomes “excessive” or compulsive.
Are more matches more preferable?
The same team of researchers conducted a second study which focused on whether the number of matches women received was related to loneliness and mate choice overload. This time, their sample consisted of 125 undergraduate women whose ages ranged from 18 to 35. After submitting a photo of themselves that they would use on a dating app, participants rated another 31 profiles of people who had reportedly already rated them.
Participants were assigned to one of two conditions: they either matched most of the other profiles (27 out of 31 cases), or they only matched some of the other profiles (3 out of 31 cases). After participants completed the experimental task, they were asked about (a) their loneliness status, (b) fear of being single, and (c) partner choice overload.
Perhaps surprisingly, the number of matches a person received did not affect participants’ overall loneliness or their fear of being single. These findings challenge some popular assumptions that loneliness can be solved by dating apps, as well as the idea that loneliness is are caused with dating apps when people get very few matches.
That said, participants who had a high number of matches (27 of 31) experienced higher partner choice overload than those in the lower match condition. In other words, fewer matches may not necessarily be a bad thing! Participants who had the opportunity to match with a larger number of people appeared to be overwhelmed by the number of potential partners to choose from, which could well exacerbate excessive swiping behaviors because there are too many to deal with. Choice overload, then, can act as a self-fulfilling prophecy where people who already feel overwhelmed continue to match others in search of the “perfect” partner, which increases the number of matches (and corresponding cognitive demand) even more.
Finding your scanning (and matching!) stats.
If you’re a Tinder user, you actually are you can see your own scan and match statistics if you’re interested in putting some of your dating app behaviors into context. The Reddit page r/TinderData has many interesting examples of users posting their own data, and from looking at just a few examples, it looks like some are scanning way more than we think.
For example, a user has swiped 129,000 times in almost 5 years of using Tinderand another has swiped over 250,000 times in 9 years of using Tinder. However, proceed with caution. This user on r/DataisBeautiful appears to have been scanned over 45,000 times in three years, and based on the data, it appears that none of his matches resulted in a personal meeting. All of this is to say that you should use dating apps in a way that works for you, but it might be a good idea to give them a break if you feel like swiping to match with others is starting to become an obsession or compulsion.
Have a dating app experience you’d like to share? Have questions about apps like Tinder and Bumble? Send us a podcast voicemail so we can answer you in a future episode at speakpipe.com/sexandpsychology.
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