Contributed by: kellyseal on Saturday, July 09 2022 @ 08:20 am
Last modified on Saturday, July 09 2022 @ 08:46 am
Since Tinder was banned in Pakistan, young singles are flocking to private Facebook groups to meet others to date, even though Facebook Dating is not available in the country.
One of the most popular Facebook groups is Two Rings, a volunteer-run matchmaking group that does not charge its users any fees. It currently has about 228,000 members, and at least 335 couples have found spouses through the group, according to news source Rest of World[*1] .
"Instead of waiting on their parents or family to find somebody, they are actually now doing it all on their own," a cofounder of a Facebook dating group for graduates of some of Pakistan’s premier business schools told Business Insider[*2] .
Pakistan banned Tinder in September 2020, along with several other dating apps including Grindr, Tagged, Skout and SayHi, declaring them to have “immoral” and “indecent” content. Tinder was by far the most popular dating app in the country and was downloaded 440,000 times in the 12 months before the ban was enacted, according to research firm Sensor Tower.
People under 30, who make up about 64 percent of the country’s population, got used to dating apps and searching for potential matches on their own, and preferred it. They were also turned off by the cost of using more traditional methods, like arranged marriage services, which can cost up to $500 US per match. When the bans were enacted, they looked to alternative methods, and Facebook groups seemed a good option.
Interestingly, Pakistani dating app users feel that Facebook is safer than dating apps according to a report from Business Insider, perhaps because they didn’t benefit from Tinder’s new safety protections, including background checks, since they were added after the ban was put in place. Some Facebook daters have found the matchmaking to be more suitable, and that people in general behave better than they do on dating apps.
While Pakistan has a younger, tech-savvy population of daters, there’s still a high demand for traditional arranged marriage services across the country. Roughly 80 percent of marriages are arranged by family members or “rishta aunties,” or older women who provide matchmaking services for a fee, according to Tahir Andrabi, a professor of economics at Pomona College, who spoke with Business Insider.
The dating app ban has been particularly concerning to LGBTQ+ daters in the country, who felt safer using dating apps to meet people because homosexuality is banned in Pakistan.