As young daters ditch the likes of Hinge and Tinder, alternative apps and events promising to ‘take dating offline again’ are growing in popularity. But can they really fix modern dating culture?
Everybody knows that everybody hates dating apps. It was no surprise when late last year Ofcom reported that the UK’s top dating apps had seen a dip in use since 2023, with Tinder losing 600,000 users, Hinge 131,000, and Bumble 368,000, with analysts attributing the decline to young people forgoing online dating. Now, it seems that even developers are clocking on to the fact that nobody wants to meet through a screen anymore, with a number of apps proclaiming to be “the dating app for people who hate dating apps” popping up in recent years.
There’s Breeze, the “dating app that takes online dating offline”, where you’re blocked from chatting with matches until you meet face-to-face on your first date. There’s Left Field (currently only available in New York), which describes itself as “the dating app designed to help you meet people in the wild” and works by sending users a push notification when a potential match is in their vicinity. French app happn operates in a similar way, with users able to connect with other users they have crossed paths with in real life. Relatedly, we’re also in the midst of a speed dating renaissance, with good old-fashioned singles events popping up in the UK, US, and beyond.
It’s cheering to see these attempts to alleviate the ongoing dating crisis given that people (read: women) are at their wit’s end when it comes to trying to find a partner. It’s clear that users are growing increasingly frustrated with ‘traditional’ dating apps like Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble – largely owing to the way they encourage superficiality, leave users feeling overwhelmed, and enable people to treat one another poorly – and so there’s a gap in the market for alternative options.
til that there’s a dutch dating app called Breeze that doesn’t let you text the other person but instead you both share your availability and the app tells you where and when to meet
— “paula” (@paularambles) July 25, 2023
These apps and events do address some of users’ main complaints. Breeze only shows you seven profiles a day, which means you’re unable to spend hours despondently swiping through profiles like you might on Hinge. Left Field is trying to inject a little more spontaneity back to dating and prevent people getting stuck in dreaded ‘talking stages’ that go nowhere. Speed dating events encourage people to be less shallow and can remind us that feelings of attraction and chemistry can often catch us off guard (and are impossible to cultivate through a cold, dead screen).
But this new wave of apps and initiatives ‘designed to foster IRL connections’ are all just sticking plasters for an issue which, by now, is deeply entrenched in our culture. The issue, as coined by sociologist Marie Bergström in her 2021 book The New Laws of Love, is the privatisation of intimacy. If you’re unfamiliar, the term describes the way in which the growth of online dating has catalysed a culture where finding love is an activity increasingly carried out in private spaces, entirely divorced from the public sphere. It’s a stark contrast to the period between the end of World War Two and 2013, when the majority of couples met through friends.
Why is any of this an issue? For starters, some studies claim that relationships which begin offline are more stable and satisfying than relationships formed via apps. But it’s also unhealthy for us to be so rigid about who we date and where we meet them. “I believe this tendency, this evolution, is negative for social mixing and for being confronted and surprised by other people who are different to you, whose views are different to your own,” Bergström told the Guardian in 2022. “We need to think about what it means to be in a society that has moved inside and closed down.” Her fears weren’t unfounded: recent research found that dating apps could be exacerbating inequality, given that they enable people to date exclusively within their socioeconomic bracket.
To some extent, we can no longer put the genie back in the bottle. I too live in our dating app-poisoned world and I know how hard it is to now approach someone in the wild. I know it isn’t as simple as sitting around looking mysterious in cafés. I know it can feel scary to confess feelings for a friend. But do we really need to get third parties involved? Really, as human beings, we already come equipped with everything we need to find love – we don’t need gimmicky apps or dating events. I’m not deluded enough to pretend that means everybody on earth is guaranteed to have a romcom-worthy meet-cute one day, but – at risk of sounding like a Richard Curtis character – I do think it is at least possible to find love anywhere if you’re really open to it.
Writer Zara Afthab recently interviewed photographer Allister Ann for Dazed to tie in with the publication of her photo series Guise, which features portraits taken in 2015 of all the men she met through Tinder. Speaking to Afthab about the photos, Ann reflected on how much the dating landscape has changed in the past decade. “Many of my friends’ parents met in a bar or when they were out dancing. When was the last time you heard a story like that from your friends?” she said. “Now, we would consider that to be a fling. You wouldn’t think of that as something serious, but maybe if there was no option of the dating app, you would have to take that seriously and follow up with them.” Perhaps that’s a good first step for anyone looking to quit dating apps (even the ‘offline’ ones): look for love everywhere. Be open-minded. Take everyone – even your flings – seriously.