Breakpoint: The decline of dating apps: Turns out, love isn’t a product
November 16, 2024
Sometimes, inventions meant to revolutionize the world turn out to be passing fads. The latest example is dating apps. A recent article in The Economist attempted to explain "why people have fallen out of love" with these digital aids to falling in love.
Apparently, dating apps peaked in 2021. They are now at their lowest number of active users since 2019. Some, like Bumble, an app that allowed only women to initiate chats, have tanked so badly they became objects of online ridicule and ditched their "ladies first" model. Others, like Hinge, which bills itself as "the dating app designed to be deleted," alienated users by putting desirable matches behind paywalls. Downloads of Tinder, the dating-and-hookup app that once ruled the rest, have fallen by a third since 2014.
