How is our love life affected by dating apps? Can we find the right one faster? Or are dating apps abusing our need for love? During the first edition of a new season of NEMO Kennislink Live, Desiree Hoving talks to three experts and the public about Tinder and the evolution of dating.
During NEMO Kennislink Live, scientists talk about current developments in their domain in an accessible way. They deal with topics that affect our daily lives. In 2019 the overarching theme is:'influencing and autonomy'.
Read more about NEMO Kennislink Live.
dating apps. When moderator Desiree Hoving asks the audience how many people ever use such an app, the majority of those present raise their hands. There is even a couple who met on a dating site. The room is reasonably well filled and there is an atmosphere of expectation, partly caused by the personal ads that are still being filled here and there. Some people enjoy the hearts that are in a bowl on the table.
“I'm just going to say it”, Hoving falls straight into the house. “If we are to believe the media, people mainly use Tinder when they are looking for sex. Is that really the case?” Sitting at the table is Elizabeth Timmermans, postdoctoral researcher in the field of online dating at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam and author of the book Love in times of Tinder. Among other things, she did research into why people use Tinder.
“We found thirteen reasons,” says Timmermans, “and sex was only in eleventh place out of thirteen. So there is only a small group of users who use a dating app because they are looking for sex. The top three most common reasons were pastime and entertainment, curiosity about what Tinder is and who's on it, and finding new friends. Love comes fourth. But statistically, the chance that you have sex with your Tinder date is greater than the chance that you will have a relationship with that person.”
Pay for a better match
To be in with a chance of winning a Tinder date, you must of course be matched first. “But how does Tinder know who is right for you?” Hoving asks. “Most people don't even know that,” Timmermans replies. “On Tinder you don't actually indicate who you are looking for. You only indicate that you want a man or a woman, or both, approximately how old that person must be and how far away that person can live.” To find your true love, Tinder then uses an algorithm, a mathematical formula that determines who appears on your screen and in what order. In addition to the things you enter yourself, Tinder includes more in that calculation. For example, it looks at patterns in user behavior, such as the speed at which profiles are swiped left or right. That data is stored; Tinder is not only looking for your true love, but also for ways to earn as much money as possible from you.
“The number of times you can swipe right to like someone is limited. When you have reached the limit, you have to wait twelve hours before you can swipe someone to the right again," says Timmermans. Lifting that limit is possible, but it is not free. In addition, Tinder's algorithm has another trick up its sleeve. “The longer you swipe, the less interesting the profiles you see, so that you start thinking:maybe I have to pay to see more interesting people. In this way they try to ensure that we as users are more and more tempted to pay.” It seems like Tinder doesn't want us to find the one. “Suppose everyone immediately finds the right one. Then there are no more users,” says Timmermans. “The Tinder algorithm ensures that the profiles that pass by are not too nice, so that you don't come back, but also not too stupid that you don't want to use Tinder anymore.”
Dating in the past
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The next expert to sit down with Hoving is Paul Puschmann. As assistant professor of Economic, Social and Demographic History at Radboud University, he conducts research into love and relationships from a completely different perspective. In the past, way before the time of Tinder, people didn't choose their partner over love. “For people, getting married was a matter of financial security and survival,” he says. “If love was involved, that was nice, but that was not the purpose of the relationship.” To find out when the marriage became romantic, Puschmann and his colleagues examine thousands of old marriage and personal ads. “The very first marriage advertisements date from the end of the eighteenth century. These were mainly placed by wealthier people, because advertisements were expensive and only the rich could read and write. In the course of the nineteenth century, more people learned to read and write, and more personal ads appeared.” Those ads weren't romantic, though. “The personals specified whether people were looking for a rich man or a woman, of Protestant or Catholic descent. There was no question about appearance, character, or hobbies:that didn't happen until well into the twentieth century."
Puschmann is curious to what extent Tinder will influence partner choice and the type of relationships that people enter into. “Social inequality has gradually increased over the years. In the past, the dental assistant married the dentist. But now the dentist marries another dentist and the assistant marries another assistant. If the algorithm of, for example, Tinder takes as little account as possible of financial aspects, this can be broken. Then Tinder can change the social cohesion in society by forming other types of alliances. Whole new social networks are then created, not only because people with different educational levels marry, but because their parents and in-laws also meet each other, and their groups of friends.”
Marketing of love
So relationships change over the centuries. Philosopher and ethicist Marjolein Lanzing, the third guest of the evening, knows all about this:she did PhD research at Eindhoven University of Technology into the influence of technology on relationships. “You can find internet dating good or bad. Do we lose something if we deal with love in this way?” she wonders aloud. “The biggest criticism of Tinder is that a basic human need, love, is being used for a completely different purpose:to collect users' data. Tinder can make a lot of money selling data to third parties. Tinder also collects data via Facebook, such as hobbies, political affiliations, addresses, telephone numbers, locations and places of residence. But Tinder collects even more data to feed the algorithm, such as what gender and ethnicity users fall for. That is pretty sensitive information, and you can imagine that there are a lot of companies that are interested in that data.”
“All that doesn't mean matches on Tinder aren't meaningful, but you have to remember that there's a marketing logic behind it,” Lanzing warns. “Ultimately, all that technology is aimed at manipulating you. The goal is to make you addicted to a platform, so that you are there more often to leave information, to spend more money, because that fits into their business model. That is of course a problem from an ethical perspective:we don't want to be manipulated, we want to be treated as autonomous people.”
Has Tinder changed our love life?
“We now know a lot about dating apps, but does online dating really affect our love life?” asks Hoving. Pushmann thinks not. “I don't think you would fall in love online with someone you wouldn't find attractive in real life,” he says. “Norms and values change, like what we consider normal ways to find a partner, but the attraction between two people to get into a relationship is the same. Online dating ensures that you come across potential matches that you would never meet in real life.”
According to some, online dating has a bad image. “In general, people have a bad idea of a relationship if you've found it online,” said one of the audience members. “That will become less as online dating is used more,” says Timmermans, “but I have heard very nice stories from people who have met on Tinder, who come up with a different scenario about their meeting. So they supposedly met in the supermarket. People are very inventive. The romance is not dead at all:we just apply it in a completely different way.”
Prince(ess) on white horse
Whether you're on Tinder out of curiosity, to find true love or because you're looking for sex, it's wise to keep in mind that Tinder is a company that wants to make money from you. Don't be tempted to subscribe because you won't see any nice profiles anymore - unless you don't mind paying, of course. And if you actually find the prince(ss) on the white horse, don't forget to come up with a good alternative story about your meeting.