Dating apps are having a rocky moment. In February, Bumble said it would lay off 30% of its workforce after disappointing results in 2023. Match Group, which has struggled to maintain paying subscribers for its most popular app, Tinder, in recent years, announced plans to cut 6% of its global workforce in July. It seems people’s relationship with dating apps, particularly among generation Z, is starting to sour.

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we hear from researchers exploring how apps have changed modern dating and the expectations around it. And we find out why some dating app users aren’t actually there looking for love, but keep on swiping anyway.

When Treena Orchard first decided to sign up to an online dating app, she was 45 years old and nervous. Not many of her friends had used dating apps, and she says it was “terrifying” to think about doing dating in a completely different way to what she was used to.

As she set out on her new dating journey, Orchard, an associate professor in the School of Health Studies at Western University in London, Canada, decided to use her training as an anthropologist to conduct a self-ethnographic study of dating apps.

I found it so bewildering and fascinating that it........

© The Conversation