I love to travel. Luckily, between work and personal trips, I'm on the road for about two weeks of each month.
29.08.2024 - 08:46 / cntraveler.com
There’s a lot to dislike about dating apps: people’s repetitive profiles (let me guess—you’re also passionate about “food”); the déjà vu conversations (him: “hey”; me: “heyy”); how Hinge’s algorithm puts the people it deems hot behind its paywalled “standouts” feature (or the “rose jail,” as the internet has dubbed it). When I discuss such matters over Sunday lunches with my astrological twin (i.e., we share the same sun, moon, and rising signs), she sometimes encourages me to take a break from the apps. Then I do another dating app detox. But what’s the first thing I do when I travel solo? Yeah, I download them again.
For a lot of us—single and nonmonogamous, business travelers and solo backpackers, swinging couples of all generations—dating apps have become the digital tools we use, reluctantly or eagerly, to connect with people while traveling. Sure, holiday hookups and the potential partners you could meet abroad remain big draws. Many of us have friends who have achieved the latter: My astro twin, for instance, met the current guy she’s seeing on a dating app she opened while visiting Tokyo. But the apps have introduced users to fleeting travel encounters too. Maybe a fellow visitor wants to tag along to that museum with you on a platonic date, or you meet a local chef who gives you an insider’s view on the regional cuisine.
The evolving landscape of dating apps continues to influence travel behaviors. But the hope for serendipitous connection also comes with the frustrating baggage many users report on the apps: concerns about addictive and time-draining user-experience designs, the drag on our mental health, and the real risks of scams and danger. Here’s how dating apps have changed the way we travel and why increasing numbers of younger people say they’re logging off—and often right back on again.
As soon as smartphones took over the world in the 2010s, upstart dating platforms began fundamentally reshaping how certain demographics of travelers explore the world. It all started with the humble hookup app. When Grindr debuted on the iOS App Store in 2009, it became the first successful GPS-enabled dating app; it put a virtual gay bar into any willing pocket. Four years later, straight people began doing it too: Tinder launched in 2012, and lo, dating apps and hookup culture fully entered the mainstream. By 2014, Tinder was processing a billion swipes a day. A crop of competing apps made it easier to connect with strangers nearby—Bumble, Hinge, Scruff, and the rest of them—and travelers began logging on as soon as they touched down.
As the apps influenced how we met people on our trips, travelers in return influenced the apps, which tracked the growing number of millennials who were swiping
I love to travel. Luckily, between work and personal trips, I'm on the road for about two weeks of each month.
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