Swiper, Stop Swiping: Recognizing the Tinder Effect
Written by Justine Galvan
I told her I was scared. My friend insisted I make a Tinder account because it was fun looking and talking to “hot college guys” online, but advised to not take it too seriously and meet up with someone. I was 16, sitting on a kitchen stool almost having a panic attack as I came up with ways on how to sneak out at 2 AM to hook up with a 19-year-old who lived at Park Avenue and wanted to send me an uber from Queens, doing exactly what my friend had told me not to. It wasn’t love per se, but I felt some type of way for someone who cared well enough to not let me go through the MTA in the middle of the night.
Tinder, established in 2012, has forever changed the world of romance. Designed for their users to anonymously swipe left (if they don’t like them) or right (if they do like them), dating turns into a game. Now with a whopping 57 million people signed up on the dating-app worldwide, almost two billion swipes are being made each day. People create and brand their best selves with calculated profiles, such as putting their best pictures, quirky bios, and Spotify anthems. With 26 million matches made each day, hook up culture – the quick and uncommitted sexual bonding between two or more people – is romanticized. As a result, this glorification of the new technosexual era has completely strayed us away from the traditions of conventional romance. Whether that is good or bad is subjective. What’s truly concerning is the way Tinder affects the brains of those using it.
Psychologists explain the term instant gratification to be the seeking of pleasure or quick contentment without any delays and interruption. Getting matches on Tinder serves as instant gratification. Living in the most advanced technological era, we are raised to be impatient. A lot of people, unfortunately, and subconsciously, rely on social media platforms, such as Instagram for instance, to evaluate their worth, based on the number of likes or followers they have. It becomes a jungle of comparison and competition with each other’s lives. The more likes or matches they get, the more their egos and acquired narcissism are fed. Consequently, a study conducted by the American Psychological Association (APA) conveyed that Millennials and Gen Z members are most likely to have poor mental health, with social media being a major responsible cause. Talking to a friend of mine about being on Tinder, she says:
“When I get a match – not gonna lie – I feel happy because I have very low self-esteem and I’m like ‘Oh my, God. This hot ass boy actually thinks I’m cute enough for them to swipe right,’ but when I don’t I’m like, ‘Holy shit, I’m really that ugly… they didn’t even try to actually get to know me before disregarding me.’”
As human beings, we seek pleasure and avoid pain. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is released when human beings feel pleasure such as eating food, having sex, or taking drugs. In comparison, dopamine is also released when one gets a match on Tinder. So Tinder users take part in this obsessive ritual of swiping more and more until they get their next reward, which in this case is another match, to get instant gratification. This whole process is subconsciously addictive, as compared by psychologists to drug-addicts, feeding onto an array of mental health issues. Contradictory to matching, not getting as many matches as one hoped for accounts to a feeling of rejection, which affects one’s mental health negatively if they don’t know how to deal with it. Another study also pointed out that “Tinder users, regardless of gender, reported significantly lower levels of satisfaction with face and body and higher levels of internalization, appearance comparisons, and body shame and surveillance than non-users.” Tinder becomes a swiping game based on superficiality and instant gratification is the temporary fix to deeper mental health issues.
This is not to say that everyone should immediately delete the app and be conscious about participating. Tinder, as with other dating apps, is majorly responsible for diversifying humanity. It’s fun and thrilling talking and meeting new people. There is definitely an adrenaline rush connecting with someone you get to pick. So go talk, flirt, have as much sex as you want, or fall in love – but know yourself, what is best for you, and keep in mind that in every good thing comes a consequence.