Rose Bialk/The Mossy Log
You agreed to meet at 5 p.m. You check your phone, perhaps hoping that time had miraculously slowed, or maybe for a message from him, divulging some understandable delay — traffic, unexpected stain, a call from an important number. To your disappointment, time has in fact not slowed, and there are no texts and no missed phone calls. Absent-mindedly, you open the app to check his profile. You figured that seeing his pictures would somehow make you feel better, that merely seeing his beaming face would fix an already catastrophic beginning to a date. You check the messages tab. Immediately, something is off. It takes you a minute to register — his profile is strangely not there. You refresh the page. Nope. Not there. You close the app and open it again. Still not there. You start to panic as you think about the conversations you have had. The phone call. You talked till 2 a.m. one morning! It does not make sense!
After a moment of disbelief, you stand up and calmly stroll out of the restaurant. It is terrible, but it has happened before. Maybe not to you, maybe not while on a date, but this situation is extremely familiar to modern singles. Just like that, a previously important connection is gone. You will never see that person again. On the bus ride home, you reopen Tinder.
Dating is hard. It may even be harder than it ever has been before. But why? We are more interconnected than ever, more available than any other time in history. The invention of the internet has created a common space for people to build relationships and make friends, possibly even with those who live thousands of miles away. There are apps and websites dedicated to the pure purpose of romance. We can call anyone at any time. We can message with ease and make plans with an almost impulsive effortlessness. If the internet can be labeled as anything, it is easy, streamlined. Should that not also mean that meeting and dating people would be the same?
Many of my peers have expressed frustration with modern dating. They say that it is nearly impossible to meet people in real life; that people are far less likely to strike up a conversation in person instead of online. It is not just them. In a 2025 survey conducted by Match titled “Singles in America,” 63% of single people say that there is more passivity in making the first move due to the modern ambiguity of relationship dynamics, and 53% report feeling dating-related burnout.
Online, one can curate the perfect first impression, choose what photos to show and which to not, think through conversations without the awkwardness of a shared silence. It is a shallow depiction of oneself, not communicating many core values, yet it also serves as a shield against rejection of one’s actual character. Because of this, meeting someone online has become, in many ways, easier than meeting people in person. But this ease, this effortlessness, this algorithmic idea of love, is in fact detrimental to the modern dating world.
bell hooks, in her famous collection of essays entitled “All About Love,” begins her seventh chapter “Greed: Simply Love” discussing isolation in the modern world.
“Although we live in close contact with neighbors, masses of people feel alienated, cut off, alone.” She later writes, “In a world without love the passion to connect can be replaced with the passion to possess. While emotional needs are hard to satisfy, material desires are easy to fulfill.”
Nowadays, most younger people have used a dating app. A 2023 Pew Research Center report on dating found that compared to 13% of people 65 or older, 53% of people from the ages 18 to 29 have used a dating app or website. Although “All About Love” was written nearly 30 years ago, hooks’ ideas about the materialistic nature of modern love speak to a larger cultural shift within the dating population. When you are seeing a profile on a screen, there is a distinct disconnect between the person you are viewing, and the profile you see. This disconnect causes a rift — the person in the profile becomes not a person at all, rather a commodity — an object. This is reflected in the ways dating apps are set up. Not only do profiles focus on the image, rather than the substance — the pictures are hailed as the most important aspect of any dating app profile — the pure influx of images and people are extremely overstimulating.
I argue that the widespread use of dating apps has changed the way we think about the people we are dating. Yes it is easier, but that is in fact the key issue. The fast-paced nature of the modern dating world causes us to view people as a commodity, and an easily expendable one at that. If you could find a new match in a few seconds, why would you try to create a connection, or even hold onto one, that took longer to form? If a connection is not as easy or streamlined as a digital match, why not find a new one?
I do not mean to say that you should not cut off people who are creepy, toxic or just not the right fit. When dating, you have to be selective. Having strong standards for yourself is one of the most important aspects of single life. I only mean to suggest that dating is challenging — it is meant to be. The trick of online dating is that it makes dating easy. Dating should push us out of our comfort zone, challenge us to try new things, even change our perspective. It is hard to recognize that your actions online are affecting real people behind the screen. Neither finding people nor cutting people off should be this effortless.
Despite its downfalls, online dating is not all bad. According to Pew Research Center, “One-in-ten partnered adults — meaning those who are married, living with a partner or in a committed romantic relationship — met their current significant other through a dating site or app.” I do not write this article to take down or invalidate those who have met their significant other via a dating app. I believe that dating apps can and do create meaningful and impactful relationships between people. This article is merely about the culture dating apps create. It is a culture of superficiality and artifice, of ease and overwhelm. It is a culture that values material over substance. If you met your partner on the apps, you were able to navigate this culture and find true connection.
If dating is so hard now, why do young people feel the need to date? What is the need for a streamlined process for dating? What is the rush? “Among those ages 18 to 29, 53% say they feel that society puts a lot of or some pressure on them to be in a relationship,” says Pew Research Center. The demand for a faster way to date — dating as many people as possible in a given amount of time — is greater than ever before. This does not mean the pressure to find love is any greater than it was before — only different. 100 years ago, the expectation was to date with the express purpose of marriage, especially for young women. Now, the pressure is to be romantically involved with someone as fast as possible, even at the expense of connection. It makes sense that we are turning to apps, because they give us the convenience of meeting people in a fast-paced world that does not make time for human connection.
Marcus Wicker ends his poem, “Ode to Browsing the Web” commenting on this dynamic.
“O world / wide web, o viral video, o god of excrement / thought. Befriend me. Be fucking infectious. / Move my eyes from one sight to the next,” Wicker writes.
This conclusion creates a plea for connection through the internet. And yet his “loneliness exists / in every afterthought.”
About the Author
