Is Tinder Destroying Dating?

That’s what an article at Brass Pills by John Hawkins proposes:

I’m not a huge fan of the Atlantic, but every so often they pump out a really interesting, well researched article like this one. They called it, “The 5 Years That Changed Dating: When Tinder became available to all smartphone users in 2013, it ushered in a new era in the history of romance.” I think a better title would have been, “How Tinder Destroyed Dating in America.” They start out by noting the impact Internet dating has had which is actually much smaller than I would have anticipated,

But in 2018, seven of the 53 couples profiled in the Vows column met on dating apps. And in the Times’ more populous Wedding Announcements section, 93 out of some 1,000 couples profiled this year met on dating apps—Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, Coffee Meets Bagel, Happn, and other specialized dating apps designed for smaller communities, like JSwipe for Jewish singles and MuzMatch for Muslims. The year before, 71 couples whose weddings were announced by the Times met on dating apps.

Pretty much everyone I know under 40 has done stretches of online dating and you’re telling me less than 1 out of 10 people getting married met that way? Yes, it’s a change, but the juice is definitely not worth the squeeze for most people.

When I was in my early twenties, I worked matching people at a dating service in Brooklyn. We used paper questionnaires that were long and detailed. I am pretty sure our match rate was better than 10 percent. The matches were hand-picked and requests for traits in a partner were taken seriously.

I wonder if Tinder has made it harder in the sense that people have to go through so many people to find someone. And with so many choices comes a more jaded view of people in general because it has to be exhausting spending so much time on an app and then following through with dates. On the other hand, there is exposure to more people and more potential mates. Is Tinder destroying dating? I’m not convinced at this point. What do you think?