Statistics

College students are turning away from dating apps and prefer to meet others in person, according to a new study by Axios and Generation Lab.

The study polled almost 1,000 college students across the U.S. and found that an overwhelming majority of 79 percent do not go on dating apps or use them less than once per month. According to Axios, Tinder is still the favorite among young daters. Twelve percent of college students use Tinder at least once a month, with Bumble and Hinge close behind at 8 percent of students logging on at least monthly.

A caveat for the study: 55 percent of respondents said they were in a relationship already, so they didn’t need to use a dating app. But at least 64 percent of those met their partners outside of a dating app – either through classes, a party, or an introduction from a friend to name a few. Only 15 percent said they’d met through a dating app, according to PC Magazine UK.

Tinder has partnered with the Centre for Social Research (CSR) to create a new safety guide for app users in India.

The safety guide, along with 15 safety features that are accessible on the Tinder app, are part of Tinder’s efforts to improve safety for users. The new guide “leverages CSR India’s insights amid the intersection of technology and violence against women,” according to Tinder’s announcement.

Starting in September, Tinder users will get a prompt through the app’s messaging system on how to access the safety guide, according to the Hindustan Times.

The Australian government told the dating app industry that they must improve safety standards on their apps or risk being forced to make changes through legislation. Dating app companies were given until June 30th, 2024 to develop a “voluntary code of conduct” to address user concerns about safety.

According to the Associated Press, the government was basing its decision on new research that found three-quarters of dating app users in Australia between 2016 and 2021 had suffered some form of sexual violence. The research was conducted by the Australian Institute of Criminology and published last year.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland noted that dating apps have become the most popular way to meet people, and therefore must improve when it comes to protecting the people using them. “The government is concerned about rates of sexual harassment, abusive and threatening language, unsolicited sexual images and violence facilitated by these platforms,” she said, according to Associated Press.

Muzz dating app, formerly MuzzMatch, has had a hard time growing an active userbase in India, despite the country having the third largest Muslim population in the world. Also, nearly 50% of India’s population is under 25 years, making the country the second-largest market for dating apps (after the United States).

Muzz is marketed as a matchmaking app rather than a dating app for Muslim singles, because as founder Shahzad Younas told Rest of World: ““We don’t date. We get people married.” The app however, is encountering safety problems concerning fake accounts and bots, a problem for all dating apps. But there are more issues to consider for a marriage-minded app in India, because dating app users have had their photos taken and used for other purposes.

One such high-profile incident happened in 2022, where a group worked to scrape photos of prominent Indian Muslim women and uploaded them to a dating app “listing them at ‘auction’ with an attempt to humiliate them,” according to Rest of World. This kind of behavior could become more common without specific protocols and safety measures in place.

Shares of Bumble fell 4 percent in early August after the company shared its relatively “lackluster” third-quarter revenue forecast, coupled with a sharper rise in its operating expenses, according to Reuters.

This rise in spending concerned investors, especially after Tinder’s parent company Match Group recently predicted that its third quarter revenue would be higher than analyst expectations, despite its own spend on development and marketing. The company has struggled lately with Tinder, and has been implementing new features to increase in-app revenue and expand its userbase. The company also recently announced it will be launching a high-end service for users who are willing to pay as much as $500 per month.

Bumble meanwhile shared that its operating expenses had jumped 7 percent in the second quarter with additional spend on product development and marketing.

Singles are turning to their travels to find romance this summer, a term that’s being dubbed “wanderlove.”

According to a new survey from Bumble, a majority of 53 percent of people on its app are looking for a holiday fling this summer instead of searching for longer-term options closer to home.

Part of this trend could be due to the number of singles who choose to travel alone to explore new destinations and are looking to meet new people along the way. Bumble found that almost 30 percent of its users meet people over the app when they travel alone, and 52 percent say that dating people abroad is a fun way to learn about new cultures, according to UK website Indy 100.