Huddled underneath the covers on a dark winter night, you find yourself swiping left and right through your dating app of choice. Suddenly, a world of options is tucked neatly into your phone. Strangers, classmates, and friends all appear on your screen with a cursory glance at their lives and a couple of prompts attempting to charm with wit. Swipe right, swipe left, like a profile, send a message, match, unmatch; the world of dating apps allows you to start and end relationships in seconds. 

According to the 2024 Student Life Sex Survey, 65.3% of WashU students are on dating apps. In a rapidly growing online world, it’s unsurprising that a large portion of college students try to connect online. Dating apps are a titillating marketplace of connection, but student motivations for using the apps differ. Some students are looking to form relationships, while others may be searching for a one-time thing.

Apps like Tinder display the carefully chosen pictures, name, and (sometimes accurate) age of a prospective suitor. Users may choose to add other personal metrics like their height or try to showcase aspects of their personality through prompts, but this is optional. In a matter of seconds, users swipe left or right on a profile. If both parties express interest with a swipe right, a match is made, and they can start direct messaging on the app. The superficial bits of information permitted on Tinder naturally leave a lot of users feeling disconnected from the app.

Dating apps are still a valuable resource for students seeking romantic connections. No matter what someone is looking for, dating apps can make people feel more comfortable approaching individuals and facing rejection. In a way, dating apps make romantic and sexual exploration more accessible. 

“This process of meeting someone, and talking to them, and then eventually seeing if you can go on a date, [and seeing] if it becomes something else, that’s cool. I think dating apps somewhat facilitate that for a lot of people, especially those who are a little more introverted and aren’t as willing to put themselves out there as others,” sophomore Santiago Rivera said. 

Though dating apps are exceedingly popular, some WashU students still meet their matches in the wild. 

“I’ve never personally used [apps],” sophomore Dalen Ainsworth said. “I’ve been able to find a lot of people in … circles and people connected to me.”

For many, the apps can be an escape from the WashU bubble.

“I think the most important thing [with dating apps] is meeting people outside of WashU,” junior Cam Berryhill said. “[It’s] being able to get out of your school headspace and get a different perspective.”

Berryhill also noted that on dating apps, there is an inherent openness to date which does not seem to exist outside the virtual world. 

“I feel like it’s really hard nowadays to meet somebody in a romantic way, because I feel like that’s just not the assumption … on campus, or when you go out to the store. On the dating apps … everybody is on there explicitly because they’re open for meeting somebody,” Berryhill said.

For some, dating apps can be a more positive, safer experience than approaching someone in real life. 

“From my perspective, as a gay person, I think there’s a lot of fear and anxiety that would come from … going up and asking someone, ‘Hey, do you want to go out sometime?’ Because the social norm is that they aren’t gay,” junior Mac Barnes said. 

Barnes also expressed that dating apps can help break down stereotypes of what a person “should look like” based on their sexuality.

“I think there’s a number of times I’ve thought to myself … ‘Wow, that’s really cool that there’s no specific face, name, body type, interests, experiences, when it comes to who a gay person is, despite what we are told,’” Barnes said. 

Although they are on a dating app (an app ostensibly used for some sort of relational means), some users are not interested in meeting their match and instead use dating apps more like mobile games. Scrolling through profiles, answering prompts, and swiping can be a form of entertainment.

“I had two dating apps my senior year of high school into the beginning of my freshman year of college, kind of as a joke among my friends … and what we would do is we would kind of ‘play’ Tinder or Hinge, and kind of treat it like a game,” junior Sydney Schneider said. “It was never serious, and we would always swipe right on people we knew.”

Schneider is not the only one to point out the game-like qualities of dating apps. 

“My issue with dating apps is that they kind of make the dating process and looking for people like a game, and it becomes kind of dehumanizing, I think, especially when some dating apps really emphasize the physical appearance of someone more than who they are as a person,” Rivera said. 

Whether you are on the apps or not using them at all, they are part of modern dating culture. In an increasingly virtual world, connecting with people through online spaces is becoming more normalized, and college students have to contend with that. Dating apps create a new space where people can be open about their intentions without facing the discomfort of doing the same in the real world. Still, there is a lot of shame regarding dating app use that signals that students still hope for love beyond the online world. 

With dating apps, there is only so much personality you can show on screen. And with a “swipe left/swipe right” structure, you decide if you like someone based on this brief snapshot. Is there something to be said for falling for a crush based on vibes and not their handpicked photo taken at a National Park? The answer, though potentially rewarding, is a risk.

But, as Barnes pointed out, “If you meet someone at a restaurant or a shop … it’s just a different setup. Anything can be a dating app if you want it to be.”