Users suspect Tinder of creating addiction

Dating apps may be held responsible for causing addiction among users. On Valentine’s Day, six Americans filed a lawsuit against Match Group, which owns Tinder. According to Reuters, they accused the corporation of deliberately luring users for profit without helping them find a match. Experts interviewed by Kommersant FM believe that such a lawsuit could be a high-profile precedent that will change the industry forever. Details from Grigory Kolganov.

Psychologists have been saying for years that social networks are addictive. Dating apps work in a similar way – users scroll through an endless stream of profiles, falling into the trap of the illusion of unlimited choice. It seems to them that the next potential candidate will be better than the previous one, and therefore it is impossible to stop.

This is the first time users have spoken publicly about the fact that the developers are to blame for this, and, symbolically, on Valentine’s Day. Users filed claims in federal court in San Francisco against Match Group, the owner of Tinder and several similar applications.

At the same time, according to NBC News journalist Emily Aikida, such accusations are not unfounded: “300 million people around the world use dating apps. The industry earned almost $5 billion in 2022. A UK survey found that nine out of ten singles who use such platforms believe they are addicted. And seven out of ten users believe that services have a negative impact on their mental health.”

Experts interviewed by Kommersant FM note that just a couple of years ago, the consequences of excessive interest in dating services were the responsibility of the users themselves. But the lawsuit against the owners of Tinder will become an important precedent, believes Ekaterina Smirnova, partner at Digital & Analogue Partners: “The statement itself is simply brilliant, it is a world-class precedent in its scale.

It will be necessary to prove that there are specific methods that the platform uses; by the way, they have also been studied. We will have to talk about what the platform focuses on promoting such content and the negative consequences of this.”

The company itself, in a response statement, openly laughed at the users’ claim. Match Group says it is genuinely committed to getting customers to go on dates and form couples rather than being on dating apps. Services don’t even need to come up with special mechanisms to retain users, noted independent expert on dating platforms Yaroslav Sergeev: “People’s need for dating is quite large, and for one person who has found a partner, there will always be two new users who have broken up, and looking for a partner again.

No one specifically creates dependencies. And moreover, I don’t even quite understand how, from a legal point of view, it is possible to prove the existence of such intentions among developers.”

Representatives of Russian dating apps, in a conversation with Kommersant FM, confirm that users may become dependent on the services. But not because of a cunning algorithm, but because of the pleasure of meeting new people. And such satisfaction, naturally, affects business indicators, noted Andrei Bronetsky, general director of the Mamba application:

“Those services that prolong the consumption of a product are taking root and, accordingly, people spend more money. Business conditions encourage people to like the app and get paid for it. So it can be interpreted that way, but these are two different things – doing an effective business and aiming at a habit.”

Before leaving Russia, Tinder earned $1.5 million a month in the country. Now users are distributed mainly among domestic services, increasing their revenue multiple times. It seems that the American dating application in the Russian Federation had a very solvent audience or a very dependent one.

Maria Shirokova