The Psychology of Dating Apps
Have you been on dating apps to ‘find your love at first swipe’? But in the end, struggled to find a meaningful connection…
Have you put in efforts to build your dating app profile but with no meaningful results…
Have you deleted your dating app, gone back to them to…. fail again?
We’ve all been through this back & forth installation of dating apps.
As per recent studies, an average millennial swipes for 10 hours a week on average. The average dating app session lasted 9.7 minutes for single men and 7.6 minutes for single women. This means we have at least opened our dating apps 60 times in a week & 9 times in a day making it a habit!!!
The interesting fact is that dating apps has seen an exponential rise during COVID times & as per recent statistics it’s one of the most popular way to meet a spouse ( 1 in every 4 couples meet this way). Thus, there are people who are using it the right way & dating apps are not purely bad as is the general misconception.
But the question here that lingers is, are the majority of us using dating apps correctly in a way that’s leading towards our goals of love, connection & not distracting us from our real-life connections? Are they more overwhelming & distracting rather than intriguing with the wide pool of potential candidates that it provides? Are we using it as a tool for connection or a portal for our internal feelings like Loneliness or Anxiety etc.?
Employees while conducting their day-to-day activities (such as working, eating, resting, etc) are hooked on their dating apps for a condensed and intermittent period. For e.g, whenever we get feelings like boredom or anxiety from our work we go to our dating apps. This constant distraction, especially when we are opening it 9 times a day, from dating apps might potentially impact our productivity. Imagine the amount of time we’ve been distracted in a day given it takes us anywhere b/w 70 secs to 23 mins to refocus after a distraction. Alternatively, we might get messages from dating apps prompting us that ‘ You just got a match’ & we go to check our matches & chat with them.
For some employees, there can be a problem with addiction. But there is a very small percentage of people who have addictions & we use this ‘addiction’ term very loosely when it comes to tech use. The vast majority of us are not struggling with addiction; we are struggling with what we could call a distraction. These distractions potentially lead to an impact on employee productivity & connection.
But, why are we distracted from Dating Apps & how are these apps working?
These apps are working to change customer behavior via a looping cycle that consists of a trigger, an action, a variable reward, and ongoing investment.
The goal of such dating apps is to create voluntary, high-frequency engagement without the users being consciously aware of such engagement. At its core, it follows the Hook Model, which is about creating a user habit. The hook model can also be used to create good habits among individuals. E.g, Apps like Duolingo are using the Hooked Model to form customer habits around learning a new language.
To give you an understanding of habits, let me take more examples:
Do you also find yourself scrolling through Instagram first thing in the morning?
I do, I – who thinks building habits is hard and tiring – always do…
I forget to write in my diary but never forget to check Twitter.
Does some products/service become indispensable parts of our lives?
This is what we call habits.
Products & App companies follow the hook model by creating habits among the user through automated behavior. They guide user through a series of experiences called “hooks.” The more user experience these hooks, the more likely it is that the hooks will then become habit-forming.
The Hook Model is a four-phase process that apps & products follow-
1. Trigger –
Triggers cue the user to take action and it is the first step in the Hook Model. A trigger is a key to behavior. It comes in two types — ‘External’ and ‘Internal’
· External Triggers – These are embedded with information, which tells the user what to do next. These relate to external factors that may distract a person from their designated work. They can be e-mails, paid ads, SMS messages, push notifications, or even recommendations from friends. In the context of dating apps, it could be notifications of messages from a match or a mail stating that ‘someone just liked your profile’
· Internal Triggers - When a product becomes tightly coupled with a thought, an emotion, or a pre-existing routine, it leverages an internal trigger. These manifest automatically in our minds. Negative emotions frequently serve as internal triggers. Examples of these can be situations, emotions, and routines that people follow.
For a dating app, it could be feelings of loneliness & wanting to connect with someone.
2. Action-
The action is the simplest behavior in anticipation of reward. To increase the likelihood of an action being taken by users, successful companies leverage two basic pulleys: the ease of acting and the psychological motivation to do it.
A classic example of this is the swiping feature of dating apps. Isn’t it so easy to swipe through profiles? Left swipe… reject.. right swipe.. accept. We are able to swipe through tons of profiles in a matter of minutes. The action is so easy to do.
3. Variable reward-
In this phase you reward your users by solving a problem, reinforcing their motivation for the action taken in the previous phase.
When you got your first match with a pretty girl or handsome guy, you probably had butterflies in your stomach. You were fulfilled by the reward — getting attention from someone you think is attractive. Whether you ended up talking to or meeting them or not, you wanted to come back to dating apps for more because you never know who else you meet. There is that ‘surprise element’ wherein you can get any form of reward. You could get hundreds of matches or none at all. You can get matched with your crush or not. This variability keeps us hooked.
4. Investment-
Investments are about the anticipation of longer-term rewards, not immediate gratification. The investment is what occurs when users put something into the product such as time, data, effort, social capital, or money. Users invest in these things to improve their own experience.
Over time you accumulate lots of chats in your dating profile or you improve your dating profile or your recommendation feed becomes better over time. As you use the app more, you invest more in making it more personalized & improved. This makes it tougher for you to leave the app.
This Hook model through various phases creates habits among users that are hard to get rid of. This impacts the working habits and the environments of an employee. The efficiency, connection & productivity of employees get impacted due to the high engagement created by the hook model.
A common preconceived notion among many, that all dating apps is that it only has had a negative habit-forming hint to them. This is not true in reality. Some Dating apps also provide a positive front foot in many senses. For example, apps such as ‘Coffee Meets Bagel’ provide only a limited number of swipes throughout the day and only notify a person after noon to restrict constant distractions. Other apps such as hinge provide a positive outlook on dating apps with over 90% of users having reported a good time on their first date.
Now as an end employee, I can take control of my Datings Apps by hacking back the Hook Model
1. Understand my internal trigger- What feelings take me to Dating Apps? Can I use those feelings for something else? If I’m feeling lonely, do I need to go to Dating Apps all the time?
2. Reduce my external trigger- Is it necessary to have all notifications (email, text, apps) on for Dating Apps?
3. Increase resistance & action of using dating apps by putting the app on the last page of my home screen so that I am checking it once or twice instead of 9 times a day
4. Use Datings Apps that serve my purpose- If I’m looking for meaningful connection which dating app should I use?
5. Using Digital Wellness Apps Like Forest to focus on my work & not be distracted from Tech
6. & many others…
We are living in the 21st century where technological advancement is taking place at a high pace, where escape from it is near to impossible. The day-to-day changes in technology are giving birth to new challenges that are slithering on our sleeves regularly. The only thing we can do is find ways to protect ourselves from these possible threats, maintain healthy relationships, and by being aware of our digital wellness so that we are able to take in the benefits of tech & avoid associated harms.
So what is it that organizations can do to improve connections & digital wellness in the workplace and hence make employees more focused & productive in an always-on world?
This is where we come into the picture. Contact me for Digital Wellness programs for your organization.
-Akanksha Singh & Rijul Arora
