r/technology • u/thinkB4WeSpeak • Sep 11 '26

Society Dating Apps Are Dying

https://time.com/article/2026/09/09/dating-apps-are-dying/
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99

u/ch4ppi_revived Sep 11 '26

This entire thread is a disgrace to reading comprehension and media literacy. Sorry but this is an opinion piece based on a single instagram post and one poll telling us 1/3 of singles use dating apps. It doesn't compare the usage over time, doesnt show any trends, nothing. The rest is just the authors opinion.

It's absolute slop. Nothing more. And the entire comment section just seems to accept it and tell stories reinforcing it. Spreading missinformation has never been easier I guess.

14

u/Glittering-Path-2824 Sep 11 '26

in general opinion pieces are the toilet paper of publishing. almost anyone with any bias or bent intent can grab a few eyeballs for free. opinion pieces shouldn’t be allowed on news subs.

3

u/OldDudeOpinion Sep 11 '26

Online published content…even by reputable sources…. is often written by uneducated wanna be influencers as contributors instead of actual trained journalists. You can’t trust any source to have educated writers, publish researched content, and have at least an attempt at neutral views so a reader can form their own opinion with their own mind.

Journalism is dead.

29

u/PiasaThunder Sep 11 '26

Sir, this is Reddit, we only read titles and create conclusions based on our own biases. 

14

u/justfortrees Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

Ah yes TIME magazine, known for its poor content and lack of editorial standards. /s

There’s literally almost a dozen source links and that 1/3 poll had a sample size of 2,100 and shows that respondents have stopped using dating apps.

6

u/kidnamedsloppysteak Sep 11 '26

Have you actually looked at the source links? The only one that presents data is the harris poll one, and that one doesn't show any data over time. It's hard to say looking at it whether the usage is actually slipping.

5

u/dalegribble2012 Sep 11 '26

It’s an opinion piece. You made your conclusion and work backward.

3

u/SteelFinn Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

Right on the nose man. This should be higher. I read the article, and yeah it talks about stats, but more than 67% of people meet online these days. We really do live in a world where we just react and don't fact check. Like fair, the article did cite a study BUT STILL people are still online, using dating apps? Maybe. But yeah, this is a good take on this comment section.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/SteelFinn Sep 12 '26

This is true BUT my point is simply the thread is treating it as though the internet is the worst place for it. Also the stat is 27 percent to 39% of that online stat SO I mean it’s not like 5 percent.

2

u/Mudkipologist Sep 11 '26

I get your frustration, clearly nobody actually read beyond the headline. But you can hardly blame people when most articles these days let you read a paragraph and half before fading out and insisting you subscribe to read the rest, and that's after you've closed several ads. This comment section is less about the actual article and more a reflection of peoples' frustration with the loneliness epidemic and disappearance of third spaces.

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u/ZappSmithBrannigan Sep 11 '26

So people giving their own experiences.. is disinformation?

3

u/kidnamedsloppysteak Sep 11 '26

People giving their own experiences and generalizing it to everyone, with a title like "dating apps are dying", rather than "dating apps have been useless for me and everyone I know" is indeed disinformation, even if it's not done maliciously.

https://mlelawfirm.com/war-stories/anecdotal-v-empirical-evidence/

4

u/ch4ppi_revived Sep 11 '26

Title: Cats are turning guy

"I saw two cats being gay"

yes that is disinformation

1

u/Bm7465 Sep 11 '26

Yeah but they’re DYING

1

u/Slow_Werewolf3021 Sep 11 '26

I’ve been noticing the same thing on Reddit. Just a word of warning: not everything you find among the top-voted posts on Reddit is true

1

u/Ok_Conclusion_6324 Sep 12 '26

Especially when OP is a bot who has posted 37,000 times

1

u/TenDix Sep 11 '26

MILLENNIALS ARE KILLING DATING APPS

1

u/Maladaptive_Ace Sep 11 '26

No everything is GenZ's fault now, because they don't go out or drink /s

1

u/Maladaptive_Ace Sep 11 '26

Very few people read the article and it doesn't matter - the headline is about dating apps and people are sharing their experiences with dating apps. Most are saying they were good in 2012-2018 and have since been enshittified and provide specific examples as to how. That is not "misinformation". The article is besides the point - it's just a starting off point for people to discuss the topic in general, and everyone's views and experiences are valid regardless of what the author of the article said. I think your media literacy is a bit.... rigid.

1

u/some1saveusnow Sep 11 '26

Ppl have no attention spans and are looking to get brain hits as soon they can, aka jumping to comments ASAP

1

u/jpkdc Sep 12 '26

Yeah I read this and thought it sounded like BS. The data is that more people meet on dating apps than anywhere else and the rate of relationships via apps is between 35-40%. Which means they are still hugely popular. Data does suggest people under the age of 25 are using them less. But what are those ppl going to once they are well past their college friend group? We shall see. I think ppl are confusing being frustrated with these apps with them dying off.

1

u/Express-Shoulder6174 Sep 12 '26

It’s all over Reddit. A tweet or a random picture with words will say something and all the comments just take it as fact. 

I literally just went through this with that post that said a study showed 68% of Gen Z can detect ai. 

There is no study. It’s completely made up

1

u/AlexKazumi Sep 12 '26

Sure, match.com THEMSELVES say it TO THE GOVERNMENT:

In recent years, some users, particularly younger generations, have shown a decreased appetite for our services and those of our competitors due potentially to a number of factors. With each new generation of users, expectations of our services change and user behaviors and priorities shift. As a result, we intend to further leverage our existing capabilities and advances in technologies like artificial intelligence (“AI”) to improve our existing services or introduce new services or features in order to better satisfy existing users and to expand our penetration of what continues to be a large available new user market. However, there can be no assurances that further implementation of technologies like AI will enhance our services or be beneficial to our business, and the introduction of new features or services to our existing services may have unintended consequences on our ecosystem, which could lead to fluctuations in the size of our user base.

That's not an editorial opinion piece, that's their own official statement, their SEC 10-K form.

1

u/ch4ppi_revived Sep 12 '26

Is this from the article?

1

u/AlexKazumi Sep 14 '26

No but it demonstrates that the article is based on more than a single Instagram post.

1

u/ch4ppi_revived Sep 14 '26

No it doesn't. It demonstrates that you took more time to research than the author to at least confirm from one provider. You are doing more work than she does.

1

u/supified Sep 13 '26

The murmur does seem to be that dating apps are at least struggling though. Like, if you asked me if I thought dating apps were doing well or not I would have predicted not, so there is at least a sense in some parts of our culture that align with this. I get that's not exactly scientific though.

1

u/ch4ppi_revived Sep 13 '26

You are proving my point

1

u/Flabbergasted98 Sep 16 '26

this is 2026? we can't be bothered with things like facts.

That said an old drinking buddy of mine was a programmer during the early development of plenty of fish. We've had long drunken talks about the nuiances of tweaking the alorithm in ways that tease dating without ever succeeding.

If the app is too good, you succeed and stop using it. if it's not good enough, you get frustrated and give up.

1

u/what-isthis-even Sep 11 '26

Nobody clicks articles. Almost always they're pay walked and the few times they're not it's just 3 sentences that repeat the title. People go to reddit for the comments, not the articles posted.

1

u/Awkward-Painter-2024 Sep 11 '26

Bro, this is what Reddit is tho. We connecting to headline and to folks' comments. This resonates because it's real. I don't need a large 2-million youth study to prove anything to me right now. Dating seems hard AF for people right now. I know two dozen, incredible women--looks, careers, money--and know NO elligible men. And if the apps are ANYTHING like Instagram reels that show me EXACTLY the kind of women I'm attracted to in between woodworking, gardening, politics, and DIY stuff at exactly the time when I'm about to dip out of reels, I can only imagine what it's like when using a dating app. No thank you!