Is the romance with dating apps over? Big cuts at Bumble, Match raise questions
Speed dating, old-fashioned ways to meet people appear to be growing in popularity
Mass layoffs at dating app provider Bumble are the latest sign that more people are splitting from the high-tech way of making connections.
The Texas-based online dating platform disclosed in a securities filing last week that it plans to lay off about one-third of its workforce, amounting to some 240 employees, with an anticipated savings of about $40 million US.
Bumble reported a total revenue of about $247 million in its most recent first-quarter earnings, down almost eight per cent from the same period a year ago.
"Bumble, like the online dating industry itself, is at an inflection point," Bumble CEO and founder Whitney Wolfe Herd said in a note to employees. The company has been "rebuilding" in recent months, which "requires hard decisions," the note said.
A month earlier, Texas-based Match Group — which owns the dating apps Tinder, Hinge and OKCupid — announced plans to cut 13 per cent of its workforce, the company's first big move since CEO Spencer Rascoff took over in February.
Rascoff wrote in a March open letter on LinkedIn that the company's apps were failing some users and don't feel like places "to build real connections."
According to research firm Sensor Tower, in 2024, worldwide monthly active user growth for dating apps slid 10 per cent year over year. For Match, Hinge showed positive growth, but not enough to offset the drop from Tinder.
Growing numbers of people appear to be trying speed dating and other old-fashioned ways of making romantic connections, with Gen Z — people born roughly between 1997 and 2012 — leading the exodus.
Dating apps in 'a bit of a crisis'
Treena Orchard, a researcher and author of Sticky, Sexy, Sad: Swipe Culture and The Darker Side of Dating Apps, said dating apps are "in a bit of a crisis" at the moment.
"People are leaving in droves, and the industry is scrambling to think about how to keep their current users and maybe continue to grow in some capacity," she said in an interview with CBC.
Orchard, an anthropologist and associate professor at Western University in London, Ont., said some people are leaving because the apps simply don't work for them.
Costs have also been rising for paid versions of the apps — which allow users to access potential matches they might not see on the free versions — without necessarily producing the desired results for users.
Additionally, she said, young people want to rely less on digital technologies and are getting more savvy about not wanting to give their data to big tech companies.
"I think it is really healthy, because dating apps don't care about us. Neither does AI," Orchard said about artificial intelligence. "These are really powerful technologies that we've normalized as part of our everyday life.
"Any over-reliance on a digital technology can really dull our interpersonal skills, and we need those."
Orchard sees the dating app struggle as part of the evolution of "a large technical innovation that has sort of run its course."
She said a future "2.0 version" of dating apps, whatever that may look like, would need to offer something less expensive and with better results if it wants to win people back.
According to a 2024 Forbes study, 79 per cent of Gen Z Americans were feeling burnout from dating apps. The most common reasons cited by those in the study were that they were unable to find a good connection, or they were tired of being lied to or "ghosted" — when someone stops responding or doesn't show up to a planned date without giving an explanation.
Platforms get unfair blame, sociologist says
But Jess Carbino, former sociologist for Tinder and Bumble, said rumours of the death of dating apps have been greatly exaggerated.
She said the seeming lack of interest from Gen Z is a "cohort effect," and young adults who are currently more focused on making real-life connections in post-secondary school or not yet looking for serious relationships will come back to the apps.
"I don't believe it that young people are not interested in dating apps generally. I believe that they don't need to use because they're still embedded within social institutions where they can organically meet people," Carbino told CBC.
She said people tend to have fewer social institutions to rely on for modern-day matchmaking — studies indicate that in North America, people on average spend far less time interacting face to face than they did 20 years ago — so dating apps are facing an unfair share of the blame when people struggle to make connections.
"It's much harder to say, 'My friends haven't set me up with somebody recently — shame on them,' versus, 'I haven't had success on dating apps — they must suck.'"
Kathryn Coduto is a Boston University assistant media studies professor who studies dating apps.
Coduto said the shift away from online dating is definitely a trend, but the apps still have a healthy user base and won't be disappearing any time soon.
In an interview, she said many people are fatigued not just from dating apps, but from technology in general, especially since screens invaded every part of their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.
'Real' interactions questioned in age of AI
Match and Bumble have been refining their apps and introducing artificial intelligence features, such as AI-enabled discovery, in an attempt to improve the dating experience. Coduto said it's a move in the wrong direction that's adding to the nervousness of skeptical online daters.
"They're already worried about who it is they're seeing, if they're seeing real people, if they're editing their photos," she said. "AI just adds another layer to that, that says, 'Well, maybe this isn't even a real interaction.'"
Coduto said paid subscription models are also a turn-off for people already drowning in subscriptions to offerings like streaming services.
Paying for something with no guarantee of a successful return is a dicey proposition for some people.
Coduto said building algorithms that reward users who spend the most money further creates "this kind of gap between the haves and have-nots," which makes some non-paying users uncomfortable.
While getting people hooked on apps might seem to be the best way for companies offering them to make money, Coduto said, dating platforms should take the opposite approach — promoting healthy use and marketing them as a social connection tool that can be used in addition to real-life interactions.
"I think they're kind of trying to steamroll through this technology fatigue that we're all experiencing, and I think if they continue that steamroll approach, they're going to burn people out more."
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With files from The Associated Press and Reuters