Dating Apps Broke the Way We Love -- But We Can Rebuild It
Online dating was supposed to make love easier. Algorithms would connect us to people we might never meet in real life, expanding our horizons and introducing us to matches perfectly tailored to our personalities, preferences, and quirks.
And yet, somewhere along the way, it all started to feel transactional — like a task to complete rather than a journey to embrace.
Love, stripped of its magic, became math.
How Swiping Turned Love into a Sales Funnel
During a research project on modern dating from the perspective of men, I was struck by how many men saw love as a math problem to solve. They likened online dating to a sales funnel: swipe on 100 people, spark 10 conversations, and hope 1 ‘converts’ into a date. Thinking about love this way, as a math problem, is emblematic of the loneliness epidemic that we’re living within.
It’s supposed to give us more options, more efficiency — but instead, it’s left us with less connection.
By reducing love to a numbers game, we lose the very thing that makes relationships meaningful: spontaneity, vulnerability, and the space to be human. Instead of searching for who someone truly is, we swipe for how well they fit a checklist.
Why Love Can’t Be Optimized Like a Job Search
I’ve met most of my partners through real-life, serendipitous encounters — through shared experiences, mutual friends, and unexpected moments. Dating apps, by contrast, force connection to happen before it’s had a chance to emerge naturally.
Instead of discovery, app dating is about decisions.
Do you want kids? Do you like sushi? Are you aligned politically? These questions, while useful, turn dating into a job interview, where we assess qualifications rather than letting romance unfold.
I remember one app date that left me exhausted. It felt less like a romantic meeting and more like a strategic negotiation. We exchanged bullet points on life goals, dietary habits, and weekend hobbies, but there was no laughter, no lightness. At one point, I thought, This isn’t a date; it’s a checklist exercise. I finally told him, “I don’t think I’m ‘your person.’” (His word, not mine.)
And the more I reflect, the more I see this issue spilling beyond dating.
We’ve started approaching all relationships with an expectation of efficiency. Instead of letting things evolve, we’re conditioned to evaluate everything upfront:
Is this person worth my time? Do they align with my goals? Will this benefit me?
But love and connection don’t have KPIs.
There’s no success metric for human relationships. Real bonds don’t thrive on efficiency, optimization, or perfect alignment. They grow in the gaps, the surprises, the things that don’t fit neatly into a checklist.
Yet, as we become more accustomed to treating connection as something to strategize rather than experience, we risk losing what makes relationships meaningful in the first place.
The Illusion of Choice and Why It’s Making Us Lonelier
The paradox of choice is one of the most insidious traps of modern dating. As my mother once said:
“Your generation struggles with love because you have too many options.”
She’s right. When there’s always someone new around the corner, we rarely do the hard work of building a relationship. Instead, we chase the next dopamine hit — the next swipe, the next match, the next potential connection.
It’s like playing a slot machine; each swipe offers the thrill of possibility. And that’s by design. Dating apps aren’t built to help you find love. They’re built to keep you swiping.
The longer you swipe, the more ads you see, the more premium features you pay for, the more the company’s engagement metrics and revenue grow. It’s a system designed to keep you searching, not finding.
Too much choice doesn’t liberate us. It traps us in an addictive loop of searching, never fully satisfied, always wondering if someone better is just one swipe away.
And just like a gambler pulling the lever one more time, we stay hooked, convinced that the next match, the next conversation, the next potential connection will finally make it all worth it.
And culture that constantly chases the next best thing struggles to find meaning in what it already has. In the end, the real casualty of all this swiping and searching isn’t just love. It’s our ability to commit, to invest, and to build something lasting in an age that tells us we never have to.
But in a system built to keep us playing, the house always wins.
Why We’d Rather Disappear Than Have a Difficult Conversation
Ghosting has become such a common part of dating culture that it’s almost expected. I recently overheard a young woman lamenting that a guy wanted to talk to her about why their relationship wasn’t working.
Her response?
“Can’t he just ghost me like a normal person?”
It was funny in the moment but heartbreaking on reflection. Ghosting, once considered the height of rudeness, has been normalized to the point that an honest conversation feels like an inconvenience.
And this isn’t just about dating. We see it in the workplace; new hires never show up, clients ignore proposals, even major corporations lay off employees with cold, automated emails.
We’ve become a culture of avoidance.
Ghosting isn’t just about individuals. It’s a symptom of a larger discomfort with emotional accountability. When avoidance becomes the norm, we don’t just lose relationships; we lose the skills that make relationships work.
If we never practice honesty, confrontation, or repair, we weaken our ability to handle life’s inevitable discomforts.
At some point, we have to ask ourselves:
Are we avoiding others, or are we avoiding ourselves?
How Dating Apps Trained Us to Reject Before We Connect
Dating apps have conditioned us to reject before we explore — a reflex I call the left-swipe mentality. We’re constantly scanning for flaws, red flags, or anything that doesn’t immediately feel “right.” Instead of asking, Could this person surprise me? we look for the first reason to opt out.
This mindset doesn’t just shape dating — it seeps into work, friendships, and even creativity.
We say “no” before giving “yes” a chance.
We’ve become expert eliminators rather than curious explorers, filtering out opportunities, connections, and ideas that might have grown into something meaningful, if only we’d given them the chance.
And Bumble, which I recently revisited, might be one of the worst offenders in fueling this left-swipe culture. With its bare-bones user experience, it feels like the Spirit Airlines of dating apps: technically it’ll get you there, but you’ll feel nickel-and-dimed the whole way, and by the end, you’re just praying for a safe landing.
Drowning in options conditions us to chase perfection — reinforcing decision fatigue and maximization bias, where we become obsessed with finding the ‘best’ choice rather than exploring what’s in front of us.
The more choices we have, the easier it becomes to dismiss anything that isn't instantly ideal.
And that only deepens the disconnection.
Because at the end of the day, the best connections aren’t built through swipes and compatibility scores. They’re built in the spaces where we allow ourselves to be fully seen, fully present, and fully human.
And in a world that constantly pushes us to optimize, maybe real love is simply about showing up as the quirky and vulnerable humans that we are.
Undoing What Dating Apps Did to Our Hearts
Dating apps aren’t inherently bad. They’ve expanded our horizons, but they’ve also reshaped our expectations in ways that are hurting us. They’ve turned love into a task, connection into a transaction, and intimacy into an algorithmic process.
If we want to rebuild what dating apps have broken, we have to rethink how we engage with these platforms and, more importantly, how we rebuild connection with each other.
Maybe that means spending less time evaluating and more time experiencing. Maybe it means being more intentional in how we use technology so it serves us rather than shapes us.
Or maybe it’s as simple as remembering:
Love (and life) isn’t a checklist. It’s messy, unpredictable, and often inconvenient. And that’s what makes it beautiful.
Because at the end of the day, the best connections aren’t built through swipes and compatibility scores. They’re built in the spaces where we allow ourselves to be fully seen, fully present, and fully human.
