I explain here why dating apps could decline bigtime in next 10 to 20 years due to many factors on the horizon including areas such as: virtual reality, augmented reality, robots among other factors.
Even though online dating still carries to some extent a bad reputation, it has brought our societies many positive developments. Today still, it is not well perceived for a woman, in comparison to men, to have multiple relationships and live her life the way she truly wants, without constantly being judged. With the democratization of online dating services women can run their own private life without the need to justify anything to anybody. This has been a true positive development for our societies and online dating has much more to bring.
While the number of children born from couples who met online will skyrocket over the next decade, this is also a good time to question what could be the next development wave of this rather young industry and how technology will help people to connect differently. Augmented/virtual reality, artificial intelligence, chat bots, machine learning, etc.? How will our kids meet online in the future? And how could this contribute to making a better society?
Internet has radically changed the way we meet new people and find our partners. People meet more through online channels and outside of their friends, family and work networks, but unlike the usage of internet and social networks, people are still embarrassed to mention they are using (if they even are) an online dating platform. Worse, once they register on an online dating platform, users tend to behave in a schizophrenic manner alternating between binge-like usage, profile deletion, testing of new platforms, reregister and so on.
Future for dating:
While the tech industry is full of buzzwords the online dating industry has not cracked the video yet. Big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, augmented reality, voice recognition, virtual reality, chatbots, blockchain, how could that apply to online dating?
Besides some security features that apps like Badoo and Bumble have implemented to ensure the identity of their users, all fundamental technology shifts have not been applied to the online dating industry yet. This can be explained by:
love and algorithms, it’s not a match, as I explained in the article Stop talking algorithm when it comes to relationships, I have not been able to find any scientific studies that could derive data correlation to predict that two specific people could match in real life.
Algorithms and machine learning can however help showing you people you think you would be interested in based on your social category, your hobbies, studies, etc. (purely endogamy) but it turns out that the reality and human chemistry is more complex than that.
the limited amount of content shared on dating platforms, thus no need for content analysis and curation of videos, pictures, text and sounds.
the reticence in the context of dating to be directly exposed to somebody you do not know in a “live” situation that could open use cases for augmented and virtual reality.
Some Other Factors Include:
Dating app fatigue
“Having constant access to a pool of potential matches at their fingertips is making people more impatient, causing unrealistic expectations for first dates and a general decline in effort,” Michelle Jacoby, owner of DC Matchmaking and Coaching, told The Washington Post when asked about declining online dating trends.
Trolling
Signing up to a dating app means doing so at your own risk. This can leave you open to many unwanted advances. And don’t just think men are the main perpetrators when it comes to trolling. The Conversation carried out a survey with Tinder users and found that women’s trolling behaviour has increased and become similar to men’s trolling behaviour.
It’s just an illusion
Do you really know the person you are chatting to on the other side? “Many people have been heartbroken to discover that they have fallen in love with an online illusion and are embarrassed to admit this,” says psychotherapist and relationship expert Louisa Niehaus.
Sliding into your DMs
Instagram has more than 800 million users worldwide, so it was only a matter of time till it became a meeting ground for future couples.
“It’s basically a portfolio for your dating life,” Halen Yau, a PR manager from Toronto told The New York Times.
The platform is basically a collage of your life, expressing your interests and likes. If someone wants to connect, they’ll just DM you.
