The enshittification of dating apps
App burnout is the symptom — not the disease
My algorithm wants me to find love. The front page of my Instagram regularly recommends tips and advice from dating coaches alongside screenshots of dating app horror stories. No matter that I only “like” Maggie Rogers and pet-related content; Reels eventually offers up advice from “experts” who tell me how to find a match by approaching dating like a business, a job, a haystack I need to set on fire. TikTok shows me the same, along with married women opining that relationships are hard but worth it.
I quit dating apps in 2019 when my writing made it impossible for men not to be weird about it. I’ve since put a toe back in moments of weakness, but have always noped back out after a couple of days, like an octopus inking a predator.
It would be easy to blame me here. I am, after all, the author of a best-selling book about empowering women to leave their marriages. After “must love tacos and pineapple on pizza,” very few men have “professional feminist and journalist” listed on their ideal qualities in a woman.
But it’s not just me.
People are burned out on dating apps. A survey of people aged 18-50 found that they are burned out on dating, period. 1
In February, a Planet Money podcast chalked this up to the “enshittification” of the dating apps. The term comes from journalist Cory Doctorow, who used it to describe the phenomenon of online platforms, initially designed (at least ostensibly) to be useful for you, crumbling into profit-driven algorithms, designed to steal your information, serve you ads, and take your money.
This year, dating app users sued the Match Group, which owns Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, and the League, for gamifying love and turning people into swiping addicts rather than delivering on their marketing promises. The lawsuit states, “Match intentionally designs the Platforms with addictive, game-like design features, which lock users into a perpetual pay-to-play loop that prioritizes corporate profits over its marketing promises and customers’ relationship goals.”
But I think there is more at stake here.
As a society, we are so fully invested in capitalism, competition and algorithms that it’s almost impossible to pull ourselves out of the cycle to see a bigger pattern, which is that we have entire economies built upon our misery.
It’s impossible to separate the burnout on dating apps from the collective burnout of the political moment. Gender rights are being reversed. Healthcare is unaffordable. The pay gap still exists. The minimum wage is stagnant while inflation is rising. Our government is investing in proxy wars rather than ensuring our rights to abortion, gender-affirming care, and so much more. And in the middle of this we have, in 2024, what feels like the regurgitated bile of 2016 facing off in November. Misery and fear are profitable, after all.
Which brings me back to the apps.
In so many stories about burnout, enshittification, and even the lawsuit against Match, experts are quick to recommend individual solutions for communal and corporate problems.
Burned out? Go to yoga class, buy a candle!
Lonely? Pay the League $99 a week for a chance at a date.
Does this shopping app suck? Here, try another, and another.
And there is also the used car theory of dating, where users lack the vital information they need about the car (in this metaphor, the car is your girlfriend) they want to purchase, which drives down the value of the goods. As Planet Money explained:
Basically, a new app starts up, and hopeless romantics looking for real love begin flocking to it. But so do sleazy types who lie on their dating profiles. Over time, the earnest daters go on a bunch of bad dates, encountering people who have no interest in real relationships or whose profiles are completely misleading.
As a result, some people have suggested a kind of CarFax for dating, to prevent the need for anonymous Facebook groups like the one in my area, “Is this your man 319?” (319 being the phone area code.) Such groups purport to tell the truth about potential suitors but obviously pose major issues around defamation, bias, and privacy.
Last year, I met a man who told me he approached dating like a numbers game. Line up as many dates as possible. Make a spreadsheet. Evaluate based on those factors. Then, solve for a girlfriend.
But dating isn’t like buying a car or a house. In this case, the car has to like you back.
When you approach love with an algorithm we all are dehumanized.
Some people try to scam the algorithm instead. Beat it at its own game. The haystack theory of dating promotes itself as a feminist and empowering approach to gaming a system stacked against you. Basically, the theory goes that the only way to find a needle in a haystack is to burn down the whole haystack. So you have to ruthlessly block and whittle down the list of potential suitors until you get to the needle. I’d argue that approach is also dehumanizing in its own way. Gaming an app isn’t empowering if your life is still ruled by an algorithm.
Also, people are still selling something. A dating coach, a match maker, a viral meme account about Hinge profiles, an empowering new mindset, they’re all flesh flies, feeding off the enshittification of the apps.
One theory for why things have gotten so bad involves the lack of consequences. Approaching human relationships on an app makes it easier to ghost people or to treat them badly. Your friends don’t have to know. It’s just onto the next. Ghosting is a relatively new phenomenon. (Unless you count men who simply immigrated to the new world and started new families.) And it happens because the apps offer an illusion of infinite choice and there are few if any consequences for not showing up to a date or never replying to a text.
Why is it so important to engage with this gamified approach to love at all? Why not just quit?
And people are quitting. Gen Z seems to be abandoning dating apps all together. According to a 2023 Statista survey, in the US it’s mostly millennials who use dating apps, with 61 percent of users aged 30 to 49. Gen Z is only at 26 percent.
But instead of this being a sign of progress or societal change, apps are trying to do a rebrand. Bumble has a new CEO and is letting men make the first move now! We are supposed to think this is empowering feminism! But listen, if you are trying to get me to pay to see who likes me, the only feminist being empowered is the CEO taking my money.
So often, opting out is viewed as a betrayal.
Cultural warriors are insisting we get back out there, get married, have kids, be trad wives. Do it because David Brooks and the conservative-learning Institute for Family Studies think it makes you happy and will solve the loneliness problem. And won’t someone think of the children? But that data being used to shame you back into the app grind, at the very least, has a selection bias problem. Happy relationships make people happy. But what about the majority of relationships that are not happy? Years of research shows that is male partners who primarily benefit from relationships — not women.
When I posted about quitting dating apps on Instagram, I heard from so many people who spoke of opting out of the apps as a way to gain control over their time, mental health, and social lives. Instead of being on dating apps, they were prioritizing friendships, hobbies, and IRL activities. But they were insistent in saying they hadn’t given up on love and relationships; they were just worn down.
A few people asked me if I was afraid to die alone. But listen, we all die alone. No mid relationship is going to save you from facing down the gun of mortality.
, who hosts a podcast that works to dismantle stereotypes about single people, says she’s tired of trying to change the culture. Silver opted out of apps years ago and encourages people to reclaim their time and energy.When I talked to her she had just gotten back from Italy and was walking to a pool in her New Orleans neighborhood. Her time seems well-spent. But she told me how she’s been frustrated having the same conversations over and over about how culture needs to change, about how a mediocre date isn’t better than a night alone with a bowl of pasta. And how it’s not giving up to prioritize yourself. In fact, it’s in the letting go of expectations and the gamified quest for a partner that happiness can be found.
So much of our cultural innovation relies on letting AI and the algorithm solve our problems. We can hack our love lifes, optimize our health. But algorithms will never supersede the problems of our culture. They simply contain them.
Stepping outside the algorithms is a way reclaiming our time and self-worth.
Dating apps are a symptom of a deeper cultural problem in which a person’s romantic status is seen to say something meaningful about their worth as a human being. This makes people feel desperate — which has allowed the search for romance to become gamified, commodified, and enshittified. (Well, even more than it already was.) No wonder women are exhausted.
Further reading:
I’ve written extensively about happiness and marriage. And the marriageability gap.
And you should all read
, whose newsletter is one of my favorites.And Cory Doctorow’s theory of enshittification is worth reading because it explains everything.
And, of course, if you need some reading to help you fight for your happiness, read my book This American Ex-Wife.
And/or listen to the podcast!
According to Pew, 1 in 10 partnered adults in the U.S. met their current partner on a dating app. (My editor is among them, though she claims it was an accident.) The majority of people still find a partner through friends and family connections.
I once (2007) met a gentleman who claimed to be one of the founders of Match.com. I was chatting (about wine) with his girlfriend at a wine tasting; he spotted me and joined our conversation. After introductions, I asked him if they met online. He stepped back with a disgusted look and exclaimed "God no!" They both laughed.
That was instructive.
I met my now ex-husband when he searched AOL profiles back in the day and then IM'd me (this makes me 97 years old, clearly). This only proves that a man needs to be ready for a relationship and when he is he'll go on the hunt and do what it takes. A great friend is now married (with two adorable babies) to what seems like an AMAZING catch, and her husband's been on TWO first dates in his whole life: one with his first wife and now one with my friend, his second wife, who he met through an expensive matchmaker. Either he's incredibly selective or incredibly lucky. I opted out of dating at least a year back because of the unsolicited feedback, borderline physical and mental abuse, and complete waste of time. My life has been incredibly peaceful ever since. I'm not opposed to a relationship, but, yeah, as a mouthy feminist who can financially support herself, it would take a particular kind of guy to sign on and pass my criteria. My cats agree.