‘The science isn’t there’: do dating apps really help us find our soulmate?

A class-action lawsuit filed in a US federal court last Valentine's Day accuses Match Group - the owners of Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid dating apps, among others - of using a "predatory business model" and of doing everything in its power to keep users hooked, in flagrant opposition to Hinge's claim that it is "designed to be deleted".

The lawsuit crystallised an ocean of dissatisfaction with the apps, and stimulated a new round of debate over their potential to harm mental health, but for scientists who study romantic relationships it sidestepped the central issue: do they work? Does using the apps increase your chances of finding your soulmate, or not? The answer is, nobody knows.

"The science isn't there," says sociologist Elizabeth Bruch of the University of Michigan, who has studied online dating for a decade.

The apps have undoubtedly "altered social reality", to quote the lawsuit. In the US, where uptake has been greatest since their advent, first as websites, about 30 years ago, more than half of all heterosexual couples - and an even higher proportion of gay couples - now meet online, according to Stanford University sociologist Michael Rosenfeld. Europe, slower to catch on, still has an estimated 80 million users.

Rosenfeld, who tracks US dating trends, says that online dating has steadily replaced traditional ways of finding mates, through friends, work or places of worship. It might eventually plateau at a certain market share, since those other channels haven't gone away, but reports that gen Z - which includes those now in their 20s - are turning their back on the apps are not borne out by his data.

The recent and real dating drought is more likely to be a temporary blip caused by the pandemic, Rosenfeld says, which made it nearly impossible for people to follow up online connections by meeting face-to-face. "The number of single adults in the United States increased by about 10 to 12 million during the pandemic," he says.

But even if online dating is now a permanent fixture of our social landscape, research is lacking on how happy or durable the couples are that meet that way, or on whether the apps are presenting users with the most suitable candidates. The companies don't generally release their data, but Bruch says there's no evidence that they have any greater inside knowledge than the scientists who study the question.