Online dating industry in crisis as shares fall and nearly half of all users report negative experiences on the apps.
In May, the dating app Bumble, launched as the feminist Tinder in , ran what it called an anti-celibacy advertising campaign. The ads came down and the company apologized. But the episode outlined a deeper issue: dating apps — those social media businesses that were supposed to improve, preview or supplant all manner of personal human interactions — are in crisis. Match Group, the Dallas-based owner of Tinder, Match. According to Pew research , nearly half of all online daters and more than half of female daters say their experiences have been negative.
The Bumble episode caused a bit of a chain reaction. Either way, it was full of bad outcomes for the overtly transactional online dating business. Allie Volpe, Vox writer and author of a recent article advocating for finding romance offline, says her single friends in Philadelphia are burned out by online dating.
Running clubs and sewing circles, for example. But Volpe volunteers that the situation is confusing. For gen Z, maybe their first dating experience was during the pandemic.
When paid online dating services moved to free mobile apps with instant notifications, the enterprise started to come apart, he says. Nor did the development of swipe-based dating apps replace the missed connections classified ads section of a local newspaper.
