Survey Says
Here, I explain some of the questions, and their answers, that I asked in my survey.
Pictured to the right are examples of the three different posters I put up on campus to encourage people to take my survey.
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"Do you feel like the outcome of your dating app experience says something about who you are as a person?"
I received 29 responses to this question on my survey. Out of those responses, 7 people definitely answered “yes”, while 12 people definitely answered “no”. There were quite a few people with answers similar to “kind of” or elaborated on how/why they think their experience might say something about them as people. A few responses included comments about physical appearance: “it does affect how attractive I believe myself to be”; “I think being a person of color might also distort the responses I get, as South Asian women tend to get a mixed bag, on a scale of exoticization/fetishization to the ‘Indian people are ugly/dirty/etc.’”; “I probably lack some self-esteem since I am seeking external validation.”
Other people were firm about feeling like their experience does not say something about them as people: “it’s difficult to see what someone is like purely though pictures and what they say about themselves”; “I don’t think it reflects on my value, but I think it reflects on what’s important to me in relationships”; “I don't think I'm a bad person if I don't get many matches, but it does affect how attractive I believe myself to be.” I thought the mixed answers to this question were especially interesting, and don’t necessarily show a trend. There seem to be people who truly believe that their performance on these platforms is not deeper than just that, but others who feel as though it is tied to their personhood.
Survey Basics
I asked specific demographic questions to learn about the people who took my survey. I asked for people's age, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, and racial identity. It was important to me to include some of this information in the survey data because many of these identities will have a large impact on their dating app experiences.
Michigan is a PWI (predominantly white institution), and that is shown in these results; most of my respondents are white. While these answers still give important information, they are not necessarily indicative of everyone's experiences here, specifically, people of color.
"How do you use dating apps?"
Most people who took my survey answered this question. The most common responses were "for a relationship" and "for fun". Many people elaborated on their answers with multiple reasons. A few responses expressed using dating apps for "validation", "attention", because they were "bored", "as a game", or they didn't know exactly why they were using it. I think these answers are interestingly showing the range of uses dating apps have for Umich students. As expected for a dating app, many people are actively looking for relationships or for hookups, but there is a trend of using them for other reasons. Answers like "attention" and "validation" show me that people are eager to get those things from people online that they might've never met before. Maybe those affirmations come simply from the number of matches they receive.
"Do you experience feelings of success or failure depending on the number of matches or conversations you have?"
I got 29 responses to this question on my survey. 15 people said some version of “yes” and 9 said some version of “no”. Someone commented on the feeling of failure being so bad that they will take a break from dating apps for their mental health. Someone noted how “scarce” the dating pool is in Ann Arbor, and the negative feelings of seeing people they went to high school with. There were a few comments on how getting more matches correlates with a feeling of success, while fewer matches create feelings of failure. Someone clarified that the feelings of success or failure “feel directly related to my looks”. Through these responses, a common theme of expectation is notable. One responder explained, “I am disappointed if my profile does not receive as many matches as I wanted it to//thought it would.” People seem to be expecting certain results from their profiles and online presence on these apps, and when those expectations aren’t met, the toll can be great. Another responder said something similar. While they initially said that they don’t feel feelings of success or failure, they stated, “if my algorithm only matches me with ugly people I start to get insecure about how I look.” These responses are place a lot of importance on physical attractivenes (as portrayed through photos) and seem to have a fairly immediate impact on the emotions and mental wellbeing of these respondents. In fact, the word “insanity” came up in a response to how that responder can feel about dating apps. A different responder said “the quality of matches” played a major role in how they felt about the apps they were using. They did not define “quality” as to whether it is heavily associated with physical attractiveness or not. These responses seem to be largely dependent on initial interpretations of dating profiles they come across, not necessarily in-depth conversations they shared or people they hang out with.
"How do dating apps make you feel?"
18 people responded to this question on my survey after I had asked them “Do you experience intense emotions being on dating apps/meeting people from them? (Ex, anger, joy, sadness, excitement, hopelessness, etc.)” and gave them the option of “yes” or “no”. 60% of people said no, and 40% said yes.
Here are some of the responses I got: “despair”; “excitment”; “down, inadequate”; “Anxious, excited, nervous, sad, happy”; “excited, or curious, or disappointed”; “Annoyed”; “apathetic”; “very hopeful”; “disappointed”; “Excited or frustrated”; “Insecure, sad, lonely, embarrassed”; “excitement and anxiety”; “Overwhelmed”.
Some people expressed feeling emotionally disconnected from dating apps and the experiences they have on them. Others explained that they will feel “intense joy” or “very hopeful” about matches and their possibilities. The person who said they felt “annoyed” explained that they feel “people hide the things about themselves.” 5 of these respondents said that they do not experience intense emotions at all.
Demographic Questions
I asked, “Do you feel like a certain demographic of people like/match/message with you more than others?”, to which I got 28 responses. 78% of people said “yes”, 21% of people said “no”. Then I asked, “Does this make you feel like only certain demographics are interested in you?”, to which I got 29 responses. 58% of people said “no”, 41% of people said “yes”. When I asked people to elaborate on their two previous answers, 23 people responded. Since I did not specify specific demographics that the question might have referred to, I got responses that discussed race, gender, sexuality, and occupation. One respondent said: “I get a lot of likes from people I don't find attractive or are just weird. It makes me feel like I'm not in the ‘league' I want to be in or that I can't attract the kind of man that I want to.” This response hints at how experiences on dating apps can transcend online interactions and impact how people think about themselves generally. Another response falls in this category: “The straight college men tend to match with me. It makes me feel like it’s harder to find any women.” Experiences like this one are another piece of evidence that dating app results spill over into how people might start thinking about themselves and their desirability. Some responses hinged on assumptions that may have been made on or offline: “I’m Black so I assume mostly other Black people would be interested in me.” Examples like this one might lend themselves to showing how people’s experience of themselves might mix with how they think about dating apps. I noticed some responses that hypothesized as to why they felt they were more desirable to certain demographics, like this one: “Black and alternative women love me on there, likely because of progressive views expressed in my bio.” I thought this was an interesting assumption because I wondered if this was something this responder was told in the past or an assumption they made themselves.
All of these responses got me thinking about how dating app algorithms work. In fact, two of the responses referred to the algorithms on dating apps: “I think it’s really just whoever is on the app”; “I think the algorithm is the invisble third person who is play[i]ng matchmater and the apps are not as autonomous as they would like us to believe.” The first response is an assumption about how and why people get seen on dating apps and see others. The second response is a critique of that system. It’s interesting how these two people seem to disagree with each other about the algorithm and its processes.
Even though this is not a data science project, I wanted to bring in the work done by Apryl Williams on dating app algorithms, specifically how they pertain to race and gender. Below, I’ve included some background on Apryl Williams from the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
“Apryl Williams is a jointly appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication & Media and the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan. She is also a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, a former Senior Fellow in Trustworthy AI at Mozilla, as well as an affiliated researcher at NYU's Center for Critical Race & Digital Studies.” (“Apryl Williams”)
Apryl Williams defines the term “sexual racism” in her book Not My Type: Automating Sexual Racism in Online Dating in this way: “Often concealed as private, meaningless personal preference, I define sexual racism as personal racialized reasoning in sexual, intimate, and/or romantic partner choice or interest.” The Harvard Gazette published an article in April of 2024 with this quote from Dr. Williams,
“‘Dating apps allow sexual racism to flourish because they rely on the white hetero normative standards of attraction, desirability, and gender aesthetics to perform the sorting and matching algorithms that we are so comfortable with these days,’ said Williams. ‘But sexual racism existed long before dating platforms came to be. What dating apps do is automate sexual racism, making it hyper efficient and routine to swipe in racially curated sexual marketplaces.’” (Mineo)
Dr. Williams’ work is helpful to think about in relation to these responses and to the framework of dating apps. The preconceived notions people have about racial groups other than their own impact how dating app algorithms are created. From that, those algorithms have the potential to create additional assumptions. This is a cyclical issue.
"Do you envision a (possible) future with everyone you match with?"
This was one of the last questions I asked on my survey. 29 people responded to this question. The question was asked on a scale of 1-10, 1 being “Envisioning No Future” and 10 being “Envisioning a Long-Term Future”. 9 people said 1, 10 people said 2, 1 person said 3, 4 people said 4, 3 people said 5, 1 person said 7, and 1 person said 10. I asked people to elaborate on their answer. Here are some of the responses: “Hell no. I hope my future partner isn’t on hinge looking for something”; “They’re just people on a dating app”; “I feel like you either find love or you're stuck in an endless cycle of feeling like shit”; “I prefer to meet someone serious in a class or anywhere else in real life”; “You never know what could happen…” These answers were incredibly interesting to me. The one that made me think the most was the first one. I have heard a few people say something along the lines of hoping that their future partner isn’t doing what they are. I find this thought process quite interesting because it has an inherent cognitive dissonance to it: why is this person using dating apps if they hope the person they’re looking for isn’t on them? This statement also begs the question of double standards on dating apps and with dating in general: are they insinuating that their future partner shouldn’t be on dating apps, but it’s okay that they themselves are?
What can we conclude?
This project has yielded some drastically different results and put on display different opinions and experiences associated with dating apps at the University of Michigan. To conclude, I want to return to my leading question:
How do dating apps change how we interact with each other and understand ourselves in relationships?
After my research and data collection, I conclude that dating apps alter our interpersonal interactions and significantly impact how we understand ourselves in relationships. I don’t think my data specifically supports the argument that dating apps significantly alter interpersonal interactions because my data does not speak specifically to how people change the way they interact because of dating apps. However, I think that my results show that dating apps do have a significant impact on how we understand ourselves in relationships because of how many times people explained that dating apps changed how they thought about themselves. Specifically with the results from “Do you feel like the outcome of your dating app experience says something about who you are as a person?” and “How do dating apps make you feel?”, there is evidence that people’s self-image can be deeply impacted by their experience on dating apps. I think that these changes in self-image translate to how dating app users seem to feel about their ability to find a relationship and make connections with other people, evident in the responses to “How do dating apps make you feel?” I do think that there is probably some alteration of interpersonal interactions because of how distant dating apps are to the realities of the people who are on them, but that is more an assumption than a proven fact from this research. This question can be explored much more deeply and better, more thorough conclusions can probably be made by doing more research on dating apps. But, for this project, more than anything, I wanted to learn more about how students at Umich feel about dating apps and how they’re impacted them. I wanted to bring to life the realities and experiences of people on campus and hold space for all of the emotions and opinions we share. More than anything, I hope people leave reading this project feeling less alone and more connected to each other, even though our screens keep us so far apart.