Are we really seeing a dating apocalypse as Vanity Fair journalist Nancy Jo Sales says? The article casts a critical eye on the dating app, Tinder.

As romance gets swiped from the screen, some twentysomethings aren’t liking what they see.

The rap on Tinder is that it is making one night stands easier to find and killing romance along the way. An example from the article:

“Guys view everything as a competition,” he elaborates with his deep, reassuring voice. “Who’s slept with the best, hottest girls?” With these dating apps, he says, “you’re always sort of prowling. You could talk to two or three girls at a bar and pick the best one, or you can swipe a couple hundred people a day-the sample size is so much larger. It’s setting up two or three Tinder dates a week and, chances are, sleeping with all of them, so you could rack up 100 girls you’ve slept with in a year.”

The author quotes a scientist.

“We are in uncharted territory” when it comes to Tinder et al., says Justin Garcia, a research scientist at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction.

There have been two major transitions” in heterosexual mating “in the last four million years,” he says. “The first was around 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, in the agricultural revolution, when we became less migratory and more settled,” leading to the establishment of marriage as a cultural contract. “And the second major transition is with the rise of the Internet.”

Whether or not this is the dating apocalypse the article certainly has raised a lot of voices on twitter.

Is This the Apocalypse of Dating?

New York Magazine wonders, has Tinder really sparked a dating apocalypse?

The traditional methods of dating and courtship are out; endlessly jumping from fling to fling is in. And women, despite the supposed benefits of sexual liberation, are coming out losers in this hurried new sexual landscape – used, then discarded in a pile of dick pics. For the article, Sales conducted “interviews with more than 50 young women in New York, Indiana, and Delaware, aged 19 to 29,” as well as many men, and it adds up to a series of sleazy, depressing stories. And she’s hardly the first journalist to raise this alarm: Over the last few years, reports on  “hookup culture” – some focusing on alcohol and campus culture, some on technology, and some on both – have become a thriving genre.

To the extent that all you want is a hot first date it would seem than Tinder has its place. To the extent that you want to find a soul mate for life and build a happy relationship this seems like a bad way to go.

The Good and Bad of Dating Apps

We have writing about dating apps and how they help speed up the dating process. We have also written about the risk of dating app identity theft and worse.

A Stalker’s Dream

A dating app that functions as designed is a problem a well. Happn dating app allows users to connect to users who pass within a 250 radius.

Happn is the latest addition to the app-based dating scene. Happn helps you track down strangers whom you’ve walked past or queued for a coffee behind at Pret. Rather than liking random people to match with in your general location (like Tinder), Happn uses GPS to connect users who cross paths within a 250 metre radius. So, whoever you encounter (knowingly or not) and like the look of, you can see if they’re on Happn and tap the app’s “heart” symbol to show your interest. If they heart you back then the dating begins.

This one is not about identity theft with dating apps but rather leaving yourself open to some nut case who decides to stalk you!

If you want to avoid being part of the dating apocalypse use your dating app with a little foresight. Having more folks to choose from might be a good idea but hooking up with an unending line of one night stands usually ends in sadness.