Hinge Study Finds Ghosting is in Decline

Hinge
  • Wednesday, September 30 2020 @ 09:54 am
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 Hinge has found Ghosting is in Decline

A new study by dating app Hinge found that since coronavirus lockdowns began, people are dating more and ghosting less often than before.

The company surveyed users about their dating habits since they have been sheltering at home in the wake of the coronavirus spread, and found that 27% reported ghosting less often than they did before the pandemic. In contrast, a 63% majority of those surveyed admitted to ghosting people before the pandemic.

There’s more good news for daters. Dating – in-person and via video chat – has also increased the last few months since lockdowns began. In fact, people are connecting 17% more since this time last year.

Ghosting is dating slang for stopping communication with a match – no texts, calls or video chats – without explanation. Many daters have complained about the pervasiveness of this practice (and yet also admit to doing it to someone themselves on occasion). Often, people want to avoid letting someone know that they are losing interest, so instead, they opt to “disappear” and hope their matches get the hint. 

Hinge had numbers to back up the reasons why people ghost, too. Forty percent said they ghosted because they didn’t know how to explain why they didn’t want to see someone again. About a third of respondents said they felt uncomfortable rejecting someone, and a smaller percentage felt that it was less hurtful to disappear than to reject someone directly.

However, the pandemic has made people rethink their dating strategies. Before, it was easy to meet someone once or twice and move on to the next person without any thought. People who were looking for something serious often left dating apps in frustration for the lack of commitment and follow-through from others. Since social distancing and isolating at home became the norm, people are looking for companionship and crave intimacy more than ever.

This has given rise to so-called “turbo relationships” – where daters accelerate the timeline of the relationship and become more serious more quickly. At the beginning of lockdowns, some daters in new relationships decided to quarantine together and see how things developed.

As eHarmony and Relate reported earlier this summer in their joint study about pandemic relationships, 59% of new couples feel more committed to their partner than ever.  "In wider periods of societal unrest, couples often pull together," Relate therapist Peter Saddington said in the report. "The combination of more time spent together, heightened anxiety levels and the removal of common routines – like seeing friends – is an intense mix."

The study was conducted among Hinge users. For more on this service you can read our Hinge dating app review.