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Comment by 8f2ab37a-ed6c | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if online dating tends to lead to similar impacts to mental health for some groups of people as social media does to teen girls. Just like in Haidt's examples, it's impersonal, phone-based, leading to constant social comparison, feelings of rejection, ostracism and ghosting. I wouldn't be shocked if a few years from now research came out showing that it has similar effects to adults, but they're just better at withstanding it than teens.

This is purely anecdotal with my group of friends, but we all can safely say that we feel mentally so much better when we're not on those apps, and yet the pull is always there when you want to expand your dating reach beyond your immediate circle and you hope that maybe this time around you'll get lucky and find the right partner. As a regular CBT practitioner I can detect many unhealthy conclusions that my mind makes any time I'm on these apps.

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I tried Tinder (and Hinge) as an average looking guy and found it to be dehumanizing. I rarely got matches, the matches I got usually didn't respond to my messages, and even when they did I could tell they weren't invested in the interaction. I've got a great job, a decent face, I work out, I've got friends, family, hobbies, and passions. I genuinely like myself; I'm satisfied with my life and my personal development. But I'm not in the top n% of attractiveness, so nobody cared.

I know the solution is to focus on in-person dating and building genuine connections with people in the real world, but I've had no success with that either. I asked my friends if they knew anyone they could set me up with, but nobody did. My job and my hobbies are male dominated. Every activity in my area (a large US tech hub) that I've tried is male dominated except for yoga. Maybe things will change as I get older (I'm in my early twenties), but if things continue as they are now it will take a minor miracle for me to find a relationship before I die. I just feel so lost, I don't know what to do.

Maybe this is oversharing, but I just wanted to get it out there. Thanks for reading.

Sounds like article is correct than. https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3868557-most-yo...

Maybe things will change as I get older (I'm in my early twenties)

It will. Men in their 20s are disadvantaged for the same reason that women in their 40s are: there's a lot more younger women dating older men than the reverse. The numbers will gradually shift in your favor over time.

And yeah, Tinder is usually a bad deal for everyone except the most attractive men, and women who prefer hookups to relationships.

Specifically, there are a lot more young women willing to date older men than there are young men willing to date older women. Those that are find absolutely no problem doing so.

Cheer up - I met the man I married via the Yahoo personals (now that shows my age!) when he was 32, and was his first serious girlfriend.

Just keep enjoying and putting effort into your work, family, friends and hobbies, and you’ll be a more attractive potential partner at 30 than the guys who mostly have their looks to offer.

And maybe try learning how to knit.

You're very very young, you're not gonna die before you find a partner.

I am saying this as a now married man with a kid. Don't rush it ( unless you really, really want to ). Enjoy yourself. It is the best time of your life and we just can't tell when we are in it for some reason. Things will happen on their own. No reason to force it.

I can confirm for me (n=1) that things will not happen on their own when you are not trying to "force it". For sufficiently high attractiveness men, things probably do happen on their own, but for others they definitely don't.

Keep in mind the idea that you should be going on oodles of dates also comes from media and social media. Take your time.

It's a tough call. Tinder made me anxious and depressed but it was also more effective than my alternatives for meeting people. While being single didn't lead to such acute mental health issues it did fill me with a low level sense of depression. So I treated Tinder as a necessary short term pain to achieve longer term well being.

My advice to those starting their dating app journey would be to time box your usage; give yourself at most a few months a year on the app. Uninstall in between those periods and let the dating pool recharge while you invest in yourself.

Anecdotal, but dating apps sure helped crush the self-esteem of my sister.

She still gets on them occasionally, because there's no alternative now.

Guys in the post-#metoo era just won't approach a girl at a bar the way they used to.

I don't think we need to go as far as to point fingers at MeToo for this. We have an entire generation of young adults who hit puberty after smartphones, social media and dating apps became standard. They might have never had to ask someone out in person, and going to a bar to meet someone would be the last place they think of.

https://www.statista.com/chart/20822/way-of-meeting-partner-...

To be fair I'm actually shocked by how high bars are on that chart, at least given my anecdotal experience.

Again, pure anecdata and possibly a lot of misatteibution, but 2017-ish seems to be some kind of inflection point.

Even back in 2015 or so, it seemed that the overwhelming majority of people met IRL, whereas just a few years later everyone was meeting online.

Might be a changing demographic thing (I was 22 in 2015, and 26 in 2019), but something definitely happened.

> We have an entire generation of young adults who hit puberty after smartphones

It's unfair to blame #metoo, but it isn't unfair to blame a modern version of PC that expresses itself as puritanism. This is the least sex-having generation of all time. They're afraid that saying the wrong thing to each other is genocide or rape, especially the wrong sexual thing.

It's actually become more bimodal when it comes to approaching women, or at least this was accurate between 2013-2020: There are largely two groups of men--sexual outlaws and polite society. Sexual outlaws (star athletes, musicians, drug dealers, frat boys, etc.) are expected to behave outrageously and thus won't be overly chastised for making outrageous propositions, whereas an otherwise polite society member can be blasted for coming across as inappropriate in the wrong scenario. It doesn't necessarily line up with who's attractive and who's unattractive, either.

It reminds me of the Solzhenitsyn quote about knives. If a criminal is caught with a knife he doesn't know any better, it's his tradition. But if you're caught with a knife, this is a serious crime, and you must be harshly punished.

Guys also just don't want to go to bars. Even in my 20s, "going out" always felt like a chore that I had to do to find a partner.

Approaching girls in public has high social consequences. I've read enough reddit [0][1][2] or seen enough news articles about people banned from businesses because a guy was seen as creepy.

Men need to learn what is ok and not ok when communicating with women. This is already an challenge because what is ok with one woman is not ok with another. Add in the shifting society view of what is appropriate turns it into an impossible task.

It just seems safer to do nothing and wait for the girl to make the first move.

> Approaching girls in public has high social consequences.

My read on it is that, like cold calling and door-to-door sales, this is a skill. You can be naturally good at it, you can develop it, or you can be self-aware that you suck at it and do something else.

As someone who has met all his partners in places other than bars/tinder and without any dramatic public approaches like what you're describing I would say that it's important to keep in mind that there are plenty of ways you will meet people. Obsessing over the ways that you won't meet people is counterproductive.

I get it’s a skill you need to develop, but women and society are not forgiving to low skill people.

If you mess up, you could lose your job, kicked out of your social safety net, or lose access to your favorite business.

Creepy just means unattractive

> It just seems safer to do nothing and wait for the girl to make the first move.

For the most part girls will not do this. Any woman who has ever dated men eventually learns that if a man is interested he'll make it known and if you have to chase him he's not interested. For that reason most eventually give up on making the first move because those situations never go anywhere, whereas when men make the first move they do. It's not necessarily fair but it's the typical dynamic so waiting around for girls to make the first move is very unlikely to work out in your favor. Also, the thing about men being creepy for approaching is very overblown online. In real life as long as you're pleasant and polite and willing to take no for an answer most women will be happy and gracious if you approach them. Go for it!

Bars were always terrible for meeting people. Idk anyone having success there. If it did work, I don't think apps would have taken off

Bars seem like a more expensive "pay to play" than apps in my opinion.

> Guys in the post-#metoo era just won't approach a girl at a bar the way they used to.

Bars were not a good place to find dates decades ago either. That’s more of a tired movie trope.

The bigger issue is that people just don’t seem to get out and do things as much as they did in the time before we all had unlimited entertainment options at our fingertips from the comfort of home. As soon as you do break the cycle and start doing activities in the real world, you discover that there are a lot of interesting people just a few degrees outside of your friend groups and activities.

Local meetups and hobbyist clubs of various sorts are full of interesting people who are already interested in some of the same things that you are. This brings down a huge barrier of getting to know someone: you've broken the ice merely by having an interest in a certain subject.

This is why people advocate to have hobbies (i.e., not-monetized ways to spend your time) outside of work, or at the very least a "third place" where you can meet new people in low-friction ways.

The way they used to??? Jesus H. Christ were they approaching women at bars with their genitals outside their pants? Because that's what #MeToo was about.

You can still ask to buy a stranger a drink. You're allowed start a conversation with someone you find attractive. But it's long odds. It's much better to do something with a group: join a choir, go to yoga class, take art or cooking classes, etc. It's a win-win too, because you won't meet someone right off, and while you're building that community you still get to sing/exercise/create/eat.

I think I have given up on dating apps for the most part. I live close to the red light district in my popular city and force myself to go out at least once a week by myself if I don't have anything else going on. Almost every time I will meet a nice girl or interesting person. It might not always be worth getting a number or hooking up but it's still fun and boosts self esteem and will also shows me that my worth is much higher than the apps would lead me to believe. On the apps men are sold at a steep bargain.

I do think that people, particularly men, of my generation have completely lost the concept of going out to meet people and have an idea that it's apps or nothing. In many ways this gives the ones who are willing to step up IRL an advantage. I know women also hate the apps, even though they are bombarded with matches. Meeting someone face to face is always an advantage.

You have to have money to go out. The younger generations are poorer than ever.

Dating apps select for anti social behavior by default. How many women actually need a dating app to find men?

Women also have the advantage on these apps ('putting the pussy on a pedestal') whereas IRL its far closer to equal.

Then once you do start getting matches the more formulaic it becomes and the more disenchanting and antiromantic it is until you've surpassed some high watermark among your sample size of interaction.

It's not how we're meant to function. Of course it works for some, that's a statistical certainty. The worse the sorting (or the more egalitarian) is the worse the experience will be, which is why Tinder is more of a hookup app.

The more 'serious' dating sites encounter the same initial problems despite better sorting. You're selecting for a certain kind of people who for whatever reason have low satisfaction in their personal social lives. Race to the bottom.

Tinder was definitely a contributor to my last bout of depression

No wonder if you feel mentally better if you are not in need of those apps - eg. you already have a decent social life.

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