Where the next generation of online dating is headed

Jess Carbino (aka Dr. Jess) knows a lot about how people meet and date. As the former lead researcher and sociologist for dating platforms Tinder and Bumble, she has had access to a trove of dating data. The kind you could use to train an AI with, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. As the institutions where we meet people shift — 31% of Baby Boomers met their partners at work or a religious or social group — online platforms will fill that void. Gen Z and Millennials were twice as likely to meet via a dating app (16%) than Boomers (7%).

Matt Carmichael: How do people meet each other days these days, and how is that evolving?

Jess Carbino: Our lives are mediated by institutions. People have met their romantic partners through third parties, whether that is family, friends, a religious institution, a neighborhood, an educational institution. To varying degrees, those third parties have dictated whom we date based upon our religion, our national origin or our socioeconomic background. Today, people like to think that the way we choose our partner is based upon our preferences, our values, and that third- party intermediaries are largely removed. But dating apps are third parties.

Carmichael: Have dating apps totally taken over?

Carbino: When I started studying online dating about 12 years ago, individuals would say that online dating was a tool in their arsenal. But as dating apps have become ubiquitous, online dating has emerged as the primary mechanism by which individuals meet their romantic partners. The pandemic has all but made that a sure conclusion.

Carmichael: Do people burn out on online dating? Will people get nostalgic for the bar scene? What if they never knew anything but apps?

Carbino: The fatigue aspect is inherently associated with dating. People are inherently interested in meeting a romantic partner. And when you aren’t able to find someone in an efficient way it’s just frustrating.

Carmichael: Will that fatigue open the door to new ways of finding dates?

Carbino: That could just translate into another mechanism by which people would try to meet somebody, whether it’s the metaverse or something else. This next stage will have to introduce a new technological mechanism that really upends how we think about dating.

Carmichael: One transformative new technology is AI like ChatGPT. Are we headed for virtual Cyrano de Bergeracs that will help up your dating game?

Carbino: As somebody who’s done an extensive content analysis of [dating] post profiles and messages using online dating apps for whom I’ve worked, I can tell you that fundamentally people are bad not only at presenting themselves in their profile but also at communicating who they are and what they want. And communicating via text with a stranger is a relatively new technology. Chatbots may help people get to the first date. But the dating apps would have to help develop these bots because you would have to have a large data set to be able to train them.

Carmichael: The norms around what a relationship is are changing. Do you see dating apps responding to these shifts or maybe even driving them?

Carbino: Dating apps have largely been responsive to the varying shifts that have happened in the marketplace as well as cultural trends related to sex, gender and gender identity more broadly. When I was at Tinder, individuals who didn’t identify with the gender binary really were struggling to use Tinder because they were being misreported based on their gender identity, because people didn't understand why somebody who was not identifying with the binary was being matched with them. We developed a tool that allowed individuals who didn’t identify with the binary to do so in a way that was consistent with their gender identity and how they wanted to identify.

Carmichael: There’s a tension between people wanting to present their best possible selves, but also wanting authenticity from the people who they’re trying to interact with. How do you see that playing out?

Carbino: Partially that speaks to whether people truly know themselves and at what stage of life they are in. We’re not just presenting the person who we are, we’re also presenting the person that we want to be, and the person that we believe other people want us to be. I don’t think that most individuals go about trying to engage in a major form of deception. There is significant learning associated with people using the apps refining their profile in a meaningful way. It’s not just based on what is working for them in meeting a partner, but also learning what they are looking for and what they want. That is something that happens relatively early on, and it would be interesting to consider whether young people are more likely to present an authentic self or what they perceive as being an authentic self, relative to somebody who’s older and has had more relationship experience.