Modern love: The popularity of dating apps is fast-rising among mid-lifers and boomers looking for love, sex and relationships. Photo / Getty Images
A couple of months after his marriage ended, Ian Howarth signed up with an online dating app. A client had told the marketing writer: “You need to get onto Bumble – you’ll be a catch,”
he says, laughing.
But online dating was like learning a new language for the dad who was single again after 28 years. Howarth duly uploaded his profile to Bumble via Facebook, which the app allows. But it also meant the algorithm divined that the 52-year-old Aucklander was after someone older, and he was suddenly matched with women over 60 seeking “hook ups” (casual encounters).
Eventually, Howarth got the wording right to indicate he was interested in a more settled relationship. Not long after he rewrote his profile, he met his current partner, who lives in another part of Auckland. They moved in very different social circles. He says they would have been very unlikely to have met without the help of a dating app. “If you are in a position where you’re trying to meet people, there is no simpler or easier or better approach than online dating,” he says.
The biggest players in dating apps have been around for about a decade: market leader Tinder has been downloaded more than 530 million times since its 2012 launch, leading to more than 75 billion matches (where both parties “swipe right” to indicate they like each other). Bumble, founded by Whitney Wolfe Herd, one of the original partners in Tinder, will turn 10 in December next year. In 2022, more than one billion matches were struck through Bumble, and more than 10.1 billion messages were exchanged on the app.
On Bumble, the woman has to make the first move. Other big players in the online love race are Badoo, Hinge, aimed at younger adults, and Grindr, launched in 2009 and aimed then at gay men (it’s since broadened to the wider LGBTQI+ community).
What is rising, too, is the popularity of dating apps among mid-lifers and boomers looking for love, sex and relationships. In the US, 10% of Tinder users in 2021 were over 55, website Cast from Clay reported. (Tinder says it doesn’t release local member data anywhere in the world, so the Listener could not obtain New Zealand figures.)
But as divorcees, widows, widowers and singles write profiles and upload photos, there are some issues of concern. One is safety, especially for women. Another is learning new dating cues – how to cope with being cold-shouldered by a potential date (ghosting) and how to adapt to setting up a date via swipes, clicks and messages rather than the once-traditional ways of meeting someone through mutual connections, at work or in a bar.
Bumble founder Wolfe Herd aimed to swing things around so women have more power in a dating scene in which men typically rule. But one criticism is that as in the traditional dating world, certain groups are disadvantaged. As 40- and 50-somethings sign up to the likes of Hinge or Elite Singles, there are more unpartnered women looking for sex, intimacy and relationships than unpartnered men in the same age groups.
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Despite the veil the multibillion-dollar dating app companies draw over their data, they are transforming intimate relationships across all age groups. They claim their apps have forged more inter-racial relationships and connections across social groups. However, research from academics such as Victoria University of Wellington’s Ally Gibson suggests relationships founded online are typically shorter. And the tendency to idealise the dream partner who may not exist applies even more so online than off.
Gibson met her partner on a dating app 11 years ago, which prompted the health psychology researcher to begin researching the world of online dating. It began primarily for the gay community [with Grindr], says Gibson, and although popularity grew steadily, the pandemic lockdowns gave it a real nudge.
“As a society, it’s going to become more and more acceptable,” says Gibson. “The stigma around mobile dating is far less than it was when dating websites were first introduced in the 1990s.”
According to Bumble, 39% of its users have come out of a serious relationship within the previous two years. For older New Zealanders who met previous partners the traditional way, the yes-no, interested-not speed of choosing a match online can be off-putting.
“People are swiping all the time; things can happen very quickly and that can also be quite challenging for older people,” says Gibson. “You don’t really have time to sit and ponder potential dates. You’ve got to make decisions quite quickly.”
She also sees a trend among younger New Zealanders: those in their 20s and 30s often prefer the barrier of a screen that allows them to swipe, sift through and converse with people – or not. To the digital natives, dating sites are just another app and Gibson expects they will be the norm for this group throughout their adult lives.
Technology also gives them the chance to dodge difficult emotional situations, which she thinks is not always healthy.
“Digital technology offers many things in terms of being able to ask someone out on a date and not having to deal with face-to-face rejection. Or to receive a request for a date or an invitation for a date and not have to manage the uncomfortable moment of having to let someone down gently, face to face. That’s a completely different interaction in person compared to online.”
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Sue and Bruce (not their real names) sit in their conservatory at the home they share high on Wellington’s hills. Sue has come down from painting watercolours in her upstairs studio; Bruce is not long back from walking their three dogs.
This septuagenarian couple would not have found one another without the help of a dating app. They’ve been together for six years and Sue moved into Bruce’s house about three months ago. Even though they seem in tune with one another and have a lot in common, Bruce, 76, shakes his head and says their paths would not have crossed without the help of a dating app.
For baby boomers, there can still be a stigma about meeting a partner online and Sue, 77, is nervous about telling people she met Bruce this way. “We were at an event and someone asked how we met, and I said, ‘Um,’’ and Bruce said, ‘Online!’ “
Sue was 70 when she was persuaded by her adult children to give online dating a go. She uploaded a photo, put her first name on the site, and wham, got a few hits – men indicating interest. But dates “weren’t a roaring success” and she was initially discouraged.
“I didn’t like being on it much. It was like undressing online in a way. I was about to come off and then I saw this grinning face,’’ she laughs.
Bruce was 69 and had been on his own for two years after an earlier online relationship ran its course. He resurrected his online dating profile and Sue was the first woman he approached. “We were both looking for longer-term relationships as opposed to a transactional relationship,” he says. “And it didn’t take us long to work out that we were both interested in a relationship.”
Bruce, a gregarious former communications executive, is enthusiastic about online dating.”Today, if you rely on organic channels, you really limit the opportunity of meeting a wide range of people. You might only meet clients, customers, and if you’re retired, that’s even worse. You might belong to organisations, but even that’s limiting. Online dating is the most wonderful development.”
Sue is more ambivalent. She wasn’t unhappily single and understands why many of her friends in their 70s are choosing to remain single because they are too nervous about entering the dating pool again, or have body issues or simply don’t want another relationship.
Bruce laughs that if Sue had written, “I want to walk on a beach during a sunset,” as one of her ideals, he wouldn’t have clicked on her. Both had their deal breakers which were expressed in their profiles: both wanted someone who had been tertiary educated, and Bruce was seeking a partner of a similar socio-economic standing. They both had grown children and dogs.
This is not something you can ascertain when you lock eyes with someone across a crowded room. But typecasting is also one of the disadvantages of the online dating world: if users narrow their options too much, they can miss what may be a happy match.
Bumble communications director Lucille McCart oversees the business in Australasia and Asia (as well as dating, Bumble has apps for making friends and business connections). At 34, she jumps on and off Bumble if she’s looking for a date. McCart says she encourages people to move away from prescriptive typecasting. She’s familiar with profiles that demand very specific requirements of the person they hope to meet: must be over 6 foot, sober, Aries.
Bumble’s research says dating apps are now the most common way of meeting people in the 18-49 demographic. For older groups, there isn’t as much research, but it is growing. Within the next decade, intimate relationships will more likely be formed online than offline, says McCart.
The Covid-enhanced work-from-home culture created a cohort dependent on digital connections rather than physical ones. “My parents met through work colleagues and that was how a lot of people met, or even through after-work drinks,” says McCart. “That just doesn’t really happen any more.’’
Christina O (her preferred name) is a flamboyant, flame-haired 69-year-old. The owner of Wellington vintage clothing store Hunters and Collectors has been single for three years after a long-term relationship ended. But it’s tough meeting people in a small place like Wellington, so a month ago she signed up to Bumble. She flicks through it, showing how she has described herself: vegetarian, art lover, conversationalist, appreciates cultural engagement and humour in a man. “Not into fishing,’’ she writes (men posing proudly with a fish is an online dating cliché). Her own photos show her dressed in colourful outfits and eclectic spectacles.
But Christina groans about her experience so far. Bumble works by showing her potential matches within a 120km radius: if she likes the look of one, she can swipe on him, opening the chance for an online conversation.
She chatted with two men – the first one she quite liked, and messaged him back and forth for a fortnight, and then “he literally disappeared’’. So, ghosted.
A second man gave one-line answers. “And then he came back for a bit, and I was wondering, did I miss something? I’m a real conversationalist so I need someone I can talk to.”
In the past, Christina met partners through connections, so she could check them out first. She finds it difficult working out how to behave and how to converse with someone she has matched with online. She feels more vulnerable – who really is this person she is conversing with, and how many other women is he also messaging?
“In the past, the way I met someone wasn’t public. I do prefer to be private. I’m not on Facebook or social media.”
In Christina’s age group of 65-69, there is an imbalance of unpartnered men to women: according to Stats NZ, 32% of women in this demographic are single/unpartnered, compared with 20% of men.
Then there’s the algorithms: as sophisticated as they are, the suggested “matches” can be baffling.
“I’ve seen ones that like me and I’m thinking, ‘No, like no,’’’ says Christina. “You’re a Christian. Oh my god, you’ve got children. I’m really surprised I’m their type.’’
Younger women say dating apps are no picnic for them, either. Lexie Brown starred in the 2021 version of the TV show The Bachelorette New Zealand. The marketing executive is now based in Perth and met her boyfriend through her brothers. Brown has never gone online looking for a date, but has girlfriends in their 30s on Bumble and Tinder who are struggling to meet someone.
“My female friends say things like ‘[dating apps] are absolute trash and a waste of my time’. And all the boys I know say it’s great but it’s overwhelming. And so they swipe, but they don’t ever chat to anyone.”
Brown enjoyed her Bachelorette experience but draws similarities between finding love on reality TV and online. “You don’t really get to know each other. You’re existing around each other, not getting to know each other, and taking all these cues that aren’t valuable.”
Those cues – what they look like and what they post on Instagram, how they “sound” in an online conversation – are not in the end helpful, she says.
“You actually need to spend time with people,” says Brown. “There’s a bit of a delusion that leads us further down roads than we need to go. And we entertain someone we should never have been entertained by because they’re just not the person for you.”
In December 2018, UK backpacker Grace Millane was murdered on a Tinder date in Auckland. Her killer, Jesse Kempson, was convicted of Millane’s murder and for offences against other women. Since then, mobile dating apps have boosted their safety measures – Tinder has an ID verification pilot in Australasia (users now have to provide a passport or driver’s licence, as well as a video selfie to prove authenticity) and any harassment or violence is banned on both apps. Neither Tinder nor Bumble allows the uploading of intimate images.
Despite this, online safety organisation Netsafe receives reports about dating apps and has online dating safety tips on its site. Kiwis have been hit with fake profiles, fake dating sites, out-of-country scams, and intimate abuse scams, says Netsafe CEO Brent Carey.
Although the apps have good reporting, blocking, and content moderation features in place, Carey says, “greater transparency about the types of harms people may experience … would help people understand what they might be exposed to on a dating app”.
A local survey of online daters by internet security firm Norton found a quarter of the 1000 respondents had fallen victim to a web dating or romance scam – catfishing [fake persona] scams were the most common (9%), followed by malware and spyware scams (8%) and fake dating sites (7%).
Victoria’s Ally Gibson says the apps can still bring on unwanted behaviour. “It’s not what the companies want but apps still make those sorts of behaviours possible because of the anonymity and lack of accountability. You could do something really crummy and then delete yourself off and not be found. It’s really easy to engage in this anonymous behaviour.”
It’s one of her reasons for her current research study, which asks the question: do we need national policies to make dating apps safer?
Paulette Benton-Greig, a senior law lecturer at Auckland’s AUT university, has also researched online dating. She studied a group of male and female users aged 27-67 and found their experiences were mixed. Some women over 40 had come out of long-term relationships and reported “transformative’’ sexual experiences via dating apps. Many women liked being able to pace and control the connections – when they wanted to message and how often – in their own time.
However, there were many negatives; many of the women talked about men “being in short supply’’, says Benton-Greig. “Some had really bad, harmful experiences and felt really mistreated and hurt. Some used the block function a lot, and some reported bad or unwanted behaviour.”
One concerning finding was the number of women who were harassed by constant messages, emails and pornographic images. “A number of women got off the apps because they just couldn’t cope with the dick pics. Some of them said that in order to be successful on the apps you have to learn how to manage that well. And if you don’t, then you can’t survive in that space. It was really pervasive and invasive.’’
The men often felt let down by a lack of communication from women they engaged with. “The environment didn’t deliver on the promises of lots of choice and opportunity. They had to work really hard.’’
Benton-Greig talks of online dating as “a low-social-cues environment”. “You have few other pieces of information about the trustworthiness of the person, or what their motivations might be.
“The literature talks about this phrase ‘intimate intrusion’. There’s a lot of intrusive practices happening on the platforms themselves. And this can be difficult for women; it’s also difficult for young gay men and disabled people, single parents, other people who might have a social status lower than the people they’re communicating with. They’re having to manage and do a lot of what we call in the literature ‘safety work’ to sustain their engagement on the platform.’’
She talked to heterosexual men who had been catfished. “They had to wade through and be quite suspicious about the women who approached them or who talked to them. When they did have contact, they had to often try to figure out themselves if this was actually a real woman, versus someone trying to scam them.
“Just like in life, there are people who do engage in violence and do have deceptive intentions. And it can be a bit harder to tell who they are in that low-social-cues environment.”
For younger people however, meeting someone online is far more natural – Generation Z and millennials have come of age checking people out via the internet and social media.
“That makes meeting a stranger in person feel riskier because it’s like, well hang on, how old are you? What mutual friends do we have? What are your political views and how do you normally dress?” says Benton-Greig.
“You’re used to being able to kind of see all of this information about someone before you decide to engage with them. So, if you match with someone on a dating app and you exchange social media handles, you can see their age, their location, their occupation. And many young people feel more comfortable with that.’’
An artist couple living in separate towns were brought together by geo-mapping technology
Three years ago, Jennifer Halli was about to delete her Tinder app when she spotted a man she liked the look of. Halli, an artist, was in her late 40s and had been on Tinder for about two months. She was keen to meet someone but the options seemed limited – when she logged on, there weren’t many men she liked or connected with. “I was just over it. I was seriously about to go off it when I saw Ché.’’
Halli and Ché Rogers have been living together for three years. They’re part of the rising demographic of mid-lifers who are meeting romantic partners online. They’re a Tinder success story – an example of exactly what the dating apps rave about: that you can meet someone you would have no chance of connecting with in the traditional dating sense.
Rogers, a New Plymouth-based artist and musician, had been on and off Tinder since his wife was killed in a car crash in 2015, leaving him the widowed father of two teenagers. He dated women he met on the app and women he met in more traditional ways. What were the differences? “Online, the quality is not as good,” says Rogers. “There’s a lot of going through until you find someone you might be interested in.”
He was also frustrated with Tinder when Halli popped up. He swiped right; she seemed like his type. It was only because he was driving towards Auckland at the time that the Tinder algorithm with its geo-mapping connected them, or their paths would not have crossed. Halli, who used a pseudonym on the app, was living in Kawhia, near Raglan. “I was in a tiny town with about 200 people in the dead of winter. There was nobody around there who I was going to meet so I was on Tinder out of curiosity.’’
Halli broke all the safety rules and told no one she was driving to New Plymouth to meet her Tinder match. Fortunately, the story ended happily – they spent five days together and she moved to Taranaki a few months later.
At that first meeting, there were surprises for both of them which they couldn’t discern on the screen. Halli noticed Rogers was shyer than she had expected. Rogers: “I was kind of struck by her beautiful blue eyes. I didn’t pick that up online.’’
Today, Halli runs art events at her New Plymouth gallery space, Might Could, and they inspire each other’s work.
“Everyone assumes we just met at an art gallery opening or something,” says Rogers. “We’ve got so much in common, it’s uncanny.’’
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