Online dating is a fast-growing trend thanks to apps like Tinder. But does our ease with swiping, messaging, and moving on have further implications in our culture, including changing the way we interact with one another?

According to website Mashable, studies on dating app behavior point to a distressing trend. On the one hand, online dating has helped to bridge people from different social circles who used to rely on friends and work colleagues to introduce them to future love interests. Now, we can login to a dating app and start swiping.

However, it’s become so easy to swipe that dating apps have become a game more than a way to connect. You see how many people you can match with by endlessly swiping right. You meet someone for drinks to see if they look as hot in person, but if you’re not blown away with chemistry, you can easily move on. There’s no effort needed, and this is becoming a problem for people who are looking for more serious relationships.

Look at the success of MTV’s Catfish, OkCupid’s omnipresent DTF advertising campaign, and the launch of Tinder-branded candles, and it’s clear online dating has become an indelible part of modern life. Dating platforms have changed the way we meet, the way we speak, the way we entertain ourselves and the way we perceive ourselves.

Recent research from sociologists Michael Rosenfeld and Sonia Hausen of Stanford University and Reuben Thomas of the University of New Mexico reveals the immense influence online dating now wields. According to the study, online dating has become the most popular way for heterosexual couples in the United States to meet. Data from 2009 showed that the percentage of heterosexual couples who met online rose from 0 percent in 1995 to about 22 percent in 2009. Today, that number is closer to 39 percent.

The dating industry remains a firm favorite for entrepreneurs who dream of founding the next breakout startup. But for many big-time investors, new dating platforms are risky ventures in a crowded market that may not be worth betting on. In honor of Valentine’s Day, Crunchbase News took a look at the relationship between startups, investors and the pursuit of finding a mate. Their status? It’s complicated.

Online dating has proved it can be an enormously profitable industry, yet despite producing impressive numbers, it often struggles to lure venture funding. “In 2018,” writes Joanna Glasner, “venture investors put $127 million globally into 27 startups categorized by Crunchbase as dating-focused. While that’s not chump change, it’s certainly tiny compared to the more than $300 billion in global venture investment across all sectors last year.”

Global venture investment in dating startups currently leans heavily toward companies based in China. Blued, a China-based dating app for gay men, received nearly 80 percent of dating-related capital in 2018. In 2017, Chinese mobile dating app Tantan received the bulk of dating investment. In 2014, Beijing-based matchmaking site Baihe raised a staggering $250 million.

February might be the season of love, but recent reports of hacking incidents may have you thinking twice before opening your favorite dating app. OkCupid is the subject of not one but two such stories - first a report revealing the dating site has denied a data breach despite multiple users’ claims of their accounts being hacked and stolen, and now the discovery of a security flaw from Israel-based cybersecurity firm Checkmarx.

According to researchers at Checkmarx, a vulnerability in the Android version of OkCupid’s mobile app could have exposed users to attacks of varying severity from cybercriminals. Bad actors could exploit the flaw to monitor usage of the app, read messages, track a user’s geographic location, send links with self-replicating malware or impersonate the victim.

“The disruptive potential of this attack is frightening as it is not hard to implement, it is not easy to detect by a typical user, and has high ​confidentiality​, high integrity​ and high ​availability​ impact,” said researchers in a post explaining the potential impact of the flaw.

Users of the popular dating app Coffee Meets Bagel woke up to a surprise on Valentine’s Day. Instead of looking at matches, they were greeted with a notice from the company saying some of their personal data had been hacked.

According to a report from CNN, the data breach occurred a few days before on February 11, but CMB executives were trying to assess the situation and the extent of the damage. In their notice, the company stated that an “unauthorized party gained access to a partial list of user details.”

Their email goes on to say: “The affected information only includes your name and email address prior to May 2018. As a reminder, we never store any financial information or passwords.”

Bumble Spotlight

So you want to be the center of attention? Bumble has announced a new feature called Spotlight that will do just that. When activated, Spotlight will bump your profile to the front of the line for 30 minutes, allowing you to be seen by more Bumble users than you would during a regular swiping session.

Spotlight will be available to all users who are willing to cough up two Bumble Coins (acquired through a separate in-app purchase) for the perk. One coin currently goes for $0.99 in the US or £1.99 in the UK. If you prefer to keep your promotional activities under wraps, have no fear that your Spotlight secret will be exposed. Your profile will not look any different to those browsing. On your own screen, stars will appear across the top of the app to indicate Spotlight has been enabled.

If you think the Spotlight feature sounds familiar, you are far from alone. It bears an obvious resemblance to Tinder’s Boost, which also promotes your profile in your area for 30 minutes. An icon appears next to new matches made during a Boost period, but other users see no indication you used the feature. Tinder Plus and Tinder Gold subscribers get one free Boost per month. Other users may purchase Boosts at any time.