10 years of Tinder | The decade that changed our dating

Tinder celebrated its 10th anniversary in September. For better — and for worse — the dating app has propelled flirting and relationships into a new era.

Florence Dancause
The Press

Tinder boasts more than 530 million downloads since its launch in 2012. Despite an array of competitors, such as Bumble or Hinge, Tinder still manages to this day to keep the title of the most popular dating application in the world. In 2021, no less than 75 million users per month “swiped” there.

“Tinder was among the first dating apps introduced to the heterosexual scene,” says Stefanie Duguay, assistant professor of communication at Concordia University’s Faculty of Arts and Science, researcher and director of Digital Intimacy, Gender and Sexuality ( DIGS) Lab.

LGBTQ+ people were early adopters of online dating — especially with Grindr, which launched in 2009. Dating apps have allowed them to create a new place to meet, says Stefanie Duguay.

Over the years, it has become common to find partners through the internet.

“It’s not yet the norm to only meet people via apps, but it’s now normalized,” says Mylène de Repentigny-Corbeil, president and general manager of the organization Les 3 sex*, which fights for sexual rights and sexual health.

More than 30% of American adults have tried this method of dating, according to a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2020. Of those polled, 12% said they had married or had a serious relationship with someone they met in a casual way. Virtual.

It should be noted that as early as 2013, online dating exceeded dating through friends for heterosexual couples in the United States, reveals a study from Stanford University. This tipping point also coincides with when Tinder was offered to a larger pool of users by being downloadable on Android phones.

What changed everything

According to Professor Stefanie Duguay, dating apps have brought about this again: the selection of potential partners. “On Tinder, we slide our fingers over the images, it’s a quick gesture and sometimes we don’t even stop to read the complete biography. »

What catches our attention in a dating app isn’t necessarily the same as in real life, she says.

“There is a slightly twisted and bizarre side to choosing from photos,” concedes Iannick Pelletier, who downloaded the application in 2014 some time after a separation. The trucker, however, embarked on the process and found his current spouse, Annick Lamarre, after a few months.

The couple, together for seven years, say each had exhausted their options for potential partners around them. “The older you get, the more popular it is [d’aller sur les applications de rencontre]because you don’t have a lot of opportunities, ”says Annick, who was 35 when she started on Tinder.

“The applications allow you to better identify the people who could have affinities with you. It helps a lot. […] I couldn’t see myself going to a bar and approaching a girl without knowing anything about her and what she wants,” explains Iannick.

A tool with multiple uses

For Megane Sauvé, Tinder allowed her to assert herself differently. There are the photos, but especially the biography, on which she leaned to stand out. “Tinder allowed me to practice chatting and flirting in a digital environment where, if you mess up monumentally, you can ‘unmatch’ the person,” says the one who has been using the apps since coming of age.

She admits to having been a regular user of dating apps. She used these for everything: finding love, having sex and making friends.

Tinder has seen many of its firsts: first sex, first love, first “rebound” (a fleeting relationship after a breakup), and first relationship — all with people they met online.

After moving to British Columbia, she used the apps to make friends. “It was a way of integrating myself there,” she says. She also had a few one-night stands, and then she met her current boyfriend in 2018.

Even today, the project manager travels the virtual world in search of friends to share her passion for literature and find gym partners.

“People use technology for their own purposes. We know that some people use the apps to make friends, to meet people in another country, to look for a job or an apartment,” says Stefanie Duguay.

“It made it possible to create meeting places for specific communities or people with particular identities,” adds Mylène de Repentigny-Corbeil.

Lots of management

“What I found challenging was the speed,” says Annick Lamarre. If you spend an evening swiping and you have tons of matches, there are a lot of people who will approach you. Then you have to manage all those connections, and some people are pretty impatient, she says.

The psychologist Marika Jauron, whose doctoral thesis focused on the exploratory study of romantic encounters on the Internet, in 2010, admits that encounters happen more quickly in the virtual age. “There are more encounters, but that doesn’t mean more meaningful relationships. »

According to her, all these choices would make us more selective. “We tell ourselves that we will meet better elsewhere, if it does not work with one,” she said. It fuels a quest for perfection. »

Joan S. Paiement, founding president of the Intermezzo dating agency, agrees. “People are coming [à son agence] with criteria that make no sense,” she exclaims.

The frustrations of dating app users are a joy for Joan, who notes that the more apps there are, the more clients she receives. For the past five years, she has also seen her clientele aged 30 and under grow. While they were very few to knock on his door, they now represent 20% of his agency’s clients.

Apps can bring pleasure, but it “isn’t linear,” notes Mylène de Repentigny-Corbeil. “You may have broken trust or a feeling of exclusion or invisibility,” she says, giving the example of ghostingwhere someone cuts off a relationship without warning or explanation.

“The virtual nature makes ghosting easier to do than face-to-face,” admits psychologist Marika Jauron. Tinder can give the impression of “disposable links” which are “easier” to create, but also “shallower”.

All the people who testified for this report did not experience judgment from their loved ones on the way in which they met their partners. It is a prejudice that persists, however. “Some people still say that it breaks romanticism,” admits Mylène de Repentigny-Corbeil.

“We have these ideals where people meet in a grocery store or while walking their dog, but for decades people have used media and technology to meet each other,” retorts Stefanie Duguay.

“As long as we have a phone in our pocket, technology will be present in our romantic encounters,” she believes.