Why tinder is such a Hit?
Understanding the psychological impact of dating apps on humans
The life as we know has changed significantly when mobile phones took over the world. Humans have created a relationship with mobile devices making a virtual world around us limiting us to our selves. We do everything using the mobile phones such as Communicating with others about buying the things you need to buy.
With the technology, humans are looking into their basic needs such as finding the best please to eat, or to find someone to live the rest of their life. Social media such as Facebook has made a huge impact on people’s lives in communication and making relationships.
Human behavior has an unconscious bond between curiosity and psychology of humans. We as humans always love to look into the things that we don’t understand, prohibited by culture boundaries and things that say “you should not do”. When humans got busy with their lives, they wanted to explore dating from using mobile phones which is connected to their life more. Applications such as Tinder, Tingle, and Blend are developed so the users can create online profiles and get to know new people.
From these profiles, Tinder has taken the majority of the user’s mind in a flash. Many users download this application for finding the match to live their life with or to have a one night stand.
Tinder’s first idea of being a mobile dating application has changed over sometime and now it is famously known and criticized as a hookup app due to user behavior in the application. There has been much research being done to understand the behavior of the tinder users. One of the recent studies was done by channel 4 regarding the Tinder usage in the United Kingdom has shown how tinder has been used now by the younger generation.
This is not the first time the technology has been accused of changing the social and sexual normals of the society. Most of the time many technologies such as internet, cars and mobile technology has given methodologies for the younger generation to find new ways to get free from restriction from parents and get away from the bonds of society for some time. Tinder has given wings to this generation where parents don’t supervise their kids and don’t look into their mobile phones to understand what they are doing.
Thirteen reasons why people use Tinder
This research was done by Elizabeth Dorrance Hall Ph.D. with the research paper Tinder Motive scale using more than 3000 individuals.
So why I wanted to look in to Tinder?
Tinder is a new thing to the little island that I am living in. Most of the time we get to know news about new things either by news or googling or in some cases by gossiping around. Due to its traditional stature of my county, apps such as Tinder are considered as less important or foul application that you should not follow up on. The interest in me for the app came with the movies. Yes, I was inspired by one of the movies I watched and I was curious about the application afterward. After watching few reviews and documentation I was in. bit of a doubt thinking that there will not be any “Matches” or “Users” who are going to be using the application in my country.
The idea of looking into the application was purely based on the curiosity and I wanted to observe the behavior of the users who are going to be using the application. The idea of the study is to go into the depth of the application and it’s users behaviors. The study and the results I found can be biased in some cases such as the culture, personal perception and the nature of the application usage.
The study was carried out for 5 months of time using real data such as my real name and pictures and
How I started using the application
I have an android mobile phone which has a mind of its own. I download the Tinder app to the mobile phone and got registered with “Facebook “ profile and start using the app. I was so excited in the first few moments because of the beautiful images I was getting as “people around your area” and I was eager to swipe right for all “the pretty girls” I am looking at. After few minutes of swiping my “free swiping” has ended and I almost forgot about the app for few hours. Then after few hours, when I took the phone into my hand I found a very curious icon on my notification bar colored in red color. I was quick in to find what I was dealing with by clicking on the notification and to my excitement, I have got a notification saying “You have a match”. I immediately tried to respond. Minutes turn to hours and then days and I did not get a reply. I was getting the feeling that I was not good looking. I changed my profile picture into quite a beautiful face of mine and then start getting more matches and more people started talking.
Why most of the people are attracted to Tinder?
To find love and casual sex —Most of the time when I had a discussion with people who are using tinder, they use the application to find love or to find casual sex. To hide my true intentions most of the time I had to go with the flow. Understanding the points I am going to tell you now, you should have a proper understanding of the Asian culture. In Asian culture, sex is something which is not talked in a public manner. In some Asian countries kissing in public is considered as an ill-mannered behavior. So when coming to sex and finding love people are a bit skeptical in their thoughts. People use Tinder a hidden way of communicating their sexual desires and needs. Many do not admit that at the first moment but they do get into it after being open.
To find excitement — In many cases, married men use this application to communicate with younger girls and many married women use this application in secret to talk to young boys in the excitement of one-night stand. Many try to hide the situations in their homes of telling how board their lives are and trying to convince others to feel bad for them or sympathize them and eventually get into the bed with them for one night. In most cases, males are more to look into one night stands and females are less into one night stands because men don’t have the chance of being pregnant.
To find self-worth —Many people use Tinder to get an idea or to validate them selfs as beautiful. When you have a beautiful body and a face you will get more matches and many people would comment on your photos. The need of validation of beauty is more common among women. But in my study I did not found any difference between men and women in this senario because in most cases men and women showed the same interest in finding their self worth.
Most of the time we think that people use Tinder basically to get a one night stand. The assumption we make can be wrong because still there are people who look for love using dating applications. Some use dating applications to fade away from their pain of a breakup and release the sense of tension and stress.
