No luck on the apps? It’s not you, it’s them
Looking for love online? You’re not alone. It's peak season for singles seeking a romantic connection.
Dating apps see their biggest surge in users, downloads and activity (external link) in the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day.
But these apps aren’t designed to help you delete your profile. They’re designed to keep you swiping.
Mathieu Lajante, a marketing professor at TMU’s Ted Rogers School of Management, says dating apps use a number of habit-forming strategies to keep you hooked.
Like all businesses, dating apps prioritize profits, and profits don’t come from deleted user profiles.
“You produce what you consume,” says Lajante, founder and head of the emoLab, a neuroscience-based business management research centre. “Users perform ‘digital labour’, generating data that platforms use to keep them engaged.”
“These platforms exploit user data to maintain user activity.”
Dating apps track swipes, rejections, the time of day you’re active, how long you engage and more. Algorithms then use this data to give you potential matches that have some of the qualities you’re interested in. The more users interact, the more data the platforms collect to keep users coming back.
It’s no different than how Amazon tracks consumers and their purchases, what they buy, what they look at, how long they are on the site and more, says Sameh Al Natour, director of Information Technology Management at the Ted Rogers School of Management.
But should this raise questions about transparency?
Chris MacDonald, Law and Business chair in the Ted Rogers School of Management, says apps treat these strategies as trade secrets. They rarely tell users how their algorithms work.
Ted Rogers School of Management experts: Marketing Professor and founder of the emoLab Mathieu Lajante, Director of Information Technology Management Sameh Al Natour and Law and Business Chair Chris MacDonald.
The dating game
When users find a meaningful connection, dating apps risk losing users. So how do they keep people swiping?
Lajante says it’s just like a casino.
“A player at a slot machine is putting in coins and pulling the lever, trying to hit the jackpot,” he says. “Casinos keep people playing by delivering rewards randomly.”
Many apps use this trick. Scrolling through Instagram works similarly.
“You’ll get ideal content once in a while,” Lajante explains. “Otherwise there’s a habituation effect – people become bored and disengage.”
“Users stay engaged when rewards are delivered unpredictably.”
Game-like features and notifications add urgency and excitement. Every notification about a new match or message delivers a small hit of dopamine. These little rewards build habits, and keep you checking the app.
Then there’s FOMO, or fear of missing out.
“Users feel that if they’re not on the app, they might miss the right match,” Lajante says. “They give you just enough to keep you engaged and wondering what’s behind the next swipe.”
That’s when apps start pushing premium features that generate revenue for them.
"Hinge jail" is a new term that refers to the ‘standouts’ section of top-tier profiles on the Hinge dating app. The algorithm restricts interaction with these desirable matches while pushing a pay-to–play feature that opens up access. Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash.
Changing expectations
Al Natour says the apps create what he calls the “e-commerce of hope.”
When apps keep hinting that something better is just one more swipe away, they start to reshape our expectations, and even inflate them.
He refers to a decision-making strategy called ‘satisficer,’ which refers to both ‘satisfy and suffice’. This means choosing something that’s good enough, rather than searching endlessly for perfection, because of limits on time, information and cognitive energy.
People tend to evaluate their surroundings and make rational trade-offs. They balance their priorities and choose someone who meets most of their important criteria, explains Al Natour.
Compatibility was enough.
“The problem now is that the environment feels infinite,” he says. “As a result, we’re being trained not to be satisfied anymore. Instead, we’re encouraged to keep swiping.”
“There’s an endless supply of potential options; endless men, endless women, endless possibilities.”
He says this can affect more than just dating.
“The expectations, and the way young people approach decisions, are different because they’re shaped by apps, games and social media platforms that gamify choice and constantly suggest there’s something better just one click or swipe away,” says Al Natour.
The gamification of online dating can have some unintended consequences that include shaping expectations in ways that may not be realistic. Photo by Vitaly Gariev via UnSplash.
The cost of love
Lajante reminds us that dating platforms take a basic human need – connection – and commodify it.
“The platform didn’t create the need for love, but it profits by turning it into a commodity.”
All businesses commodify a human need or want in some way. But MacDonald, who is also the creator and co-editor of the Business Ethics Journal Review and Business Ethics Blog author, says that love and romance deserve more consideration.
“Dating apps may be stringing us along on a larger scale,” he says. “Since they operate in an emotional space, they should bear some ethical responsibility and play fair.”
Gatekeepers of connection
Lajante argues that dating apps don’t work like free markets, where choice and competition shape outcomes. Instead, they’re more like centrally planned systems, where the platform decides who gets access to whom and when.
Users are looking for connections and platforms are optimizing for engagement. These goals don’t always align. “You’re a data point,” he says. “The system decides if you get matched. User choice is limited.”
The imbalance is reinforced by information asymmetry, Lajante says. Platforms know far more about users than users know about how matches are distributed or controlled.
The problem gets far worse because one company owns most of the popular dating apps.
Biggest players
Match Group owns Tinder, Hinge, Match.com, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish and OurTime. That gives one company control over most online dating.
When you use multiple apps without success, you might start to think something’s wrong with you and not realize the apps all use the same tactics.
“Users are made to feel that something is wrong with them and they need to figure out how to get back in the game,” says Lajante. If a user fails to find love, they feel they alone are at fault.”
This pressure drives people to adjust their bios, upload new photos or use AI to help craft wittier messages. Eventually, many users pay for the premium features that promise more meaningful connections.
The mental health toll
Users often report feeling anxious, self-conscious and burned out.
Many are taking breaks from dating apps to meet people the traditional way.
But Lajante doesn’t expect these apps to disappear.
“With busy work and life schedules, it’s not always possible to meet people in real life,” he says.
When platforms manage essential needs like housing and jobs and decide who gets access and when, the bigger question, Lajante argues, is accountability, especially in the age of AI.
MacDonald points out the tension between business goals and ethical responsibility. Yet, there’s little reason to disclose a profit-motive, since everybody old enough to be on a dating site knows that they are for-profit businesses, he says.
Online dating may not be for the faint of heart.
So, remember to also practise self-love, take breaks, prioritize real-life interactions – or quit dating apps outright if they start to affect mental and emotional well-being.
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