Swiping and dating go hand in hand today more than any other romantic trope. Forget the dinner and the movies cliche, the roses and heart shaped chocolates, these days locking eyes happens more often than not on screen. But for anyone playing the online field you’ll have heard these myths thrown about like bible truth. For your friends in relationships the world of Tinder and beyond is filled with dick pics and unsolicited pickup lines, when in fact that’s further from the truth.
Interviewing 9,000 men and women across the USA, the Tinder Modern Dating Myths Survey has come to debunk those cliches with hard found facts and the results sure are revealing. From conversing to cheating and every romantic dilemma in between, Tinder has mapped the norms.
Commitment Issues
Often Tinder is misrepresented as purely a hook up domain, a marketplace for new encounters as brief as they are swift, but the data tells a different story. Rather than killing commitment, online daters are in fact more likely to commit and are open utterers of those three big words. You know the ones. Contrary to popular belief Tinder swipers can make for long term lovers, in fact only 9% of male Tinder users say it’s hard to maintain a committed relationship. “First comes Tinder then comes marriage” says the New York Times and we tend to agree with Tinder couples becoming a more common party opener by the year.
Pick Up Quick
Tinder in fact isn’t a total pick up game, instead the survey found offline daters are 10% more likely to open the conversation with generic (aka awfully overdone) line. And thanks to a little online banter as foundation, Tinder swipers are swift in their pursuit of real life love. Except for those breadcrumbers of course, the anxious chatters who have no intention of meeting IRL and prefer to type sweet nothings from a safe distance.
It’s More Than Just Face Value
Despite the interface of Tinder, the survey found it’s much more than just the profile picture to make or break an encounter. Instead age and education were key factors in the matchmaking process while political affiliation and lack of career aspirations the biggest deal breakers. Appearance ranked third surprisingly, meaning you should probably pop up a photo holding your degree framed if you want to make yourself more swipeable.
Are We Exclusive?
Oh yes, that old chestnut. The dating conversation both online and offline daters dread, but in fact swipers are more monogamous than we often think. The survey found more clicks doesn’t mean more partners, but it did give daters a proper view of the dating pool on offer to them. According to Jessica Carbino, Tinder’s on site sociologist
“When you are dating online, you actually have a very clear idea of what the marketplace is like… You are able to have a visual idea of the pool in front of you, whereas the people who aren’t dating online are simply speculating as to what the pool may be like.”
Safety First
When it comes to the ~dangers~ of online dating, we are bombarded with information. But despite this depiction, Tinder isn’t a cesspool of nudes, STD’s and mental health compromising situations. In fact online daters are far safer when it comes to their mental and physical health, with close to 70% of Tinder users using condoms religiously compared to 58% of offline encounters. And most surprisingly of all the research, turns out men and women are no more notorious than the other at sending nudes, the survey showed a dead even split across the genders. Insert eggplant emoji here.
Image source: VICE, Glamour.
