Are dating apps making you feel self-conscious?

Survey data shows they’re having negative psychological effects on a lot of people

Here are a few things to know:

1. People are feeling ‘depressed’ too

According to this article in Business Insider:

A new survey has found that 62% of people say dating apps like Tinder make them feel self-conscious and even depressed about their appearance.

80% of female respondents said that they have edited the photographs they upload to dating apps, and 45% of women said they had considered plastic surgery to improve the way they look online

The survey of 1,500 people was carried out by social app Huggle, which is trying something different to Tinder, Bumble or other apps that use “face-swiping.” Instead, Huggle matches people based on the locations they go to. It works in a similar way to French dating app Happn.

2. Other “blind” apps are emerging

According to this article in Yahoo! News:

This isn’t the first app that tries to move away from liking or disliking people based on attractiveness. Another British app which did the same thing was FuzzyBanter. It automatically blurred people’s photos and instead let them match based on their interests. Users could reveal themselves and unblur their images.

Although, a few years ago, OkCupid tried implementing a “blind date” feature where users could set up dates without getting a chance to view the other person’s pictures. The feature didn’t take off, and OkCupid got rid of it.

3. In a way, apps are no different than checking people out in-person

According to this article in Esquire:

In a basic sense, Tinder is no more shallow than the scan men – and women too, I expect – perform whenever they enter a new room or board a train. It’s the instinctive, ‘is there anyone here I find attractive’ sweep we do, like Terminator robots pretending they can have sex.

In quite another sense, Tinder is the most shallow invention mankind has ever devised, because nothing – no display of talent, act of kindness, or even just a great laugh – is discernible in the person you’re assessing. All you have is hair, eyes, noses and mouths – raw physical attributes, a solitary sensory input, less even than animals when they’re deciding whether to hump.