Wendy GraceDating apps are encouraging our increasingly shallow culture to place most value on appearance, writes
Wendy Grace
The pitfalls of dating in the digital age recently came to attention thanks to a Vanity Fair article looking at the impact that apps like Tinder are having on relationships.
Tinder is a “dating” app that allows users to find nearby people who say they are single. If you like the look of someone, you can swipe right; if you don’t, you swipe left. In what can only be a momentary judgement users swipe left or right based purely on one thing: the face we see before us.
These dating apps play into our increasingly narcissistic culture obsessed with the perfect ‘selfie’ or portraying a perception of ourselves that often hides the reality of who we really are. Unlike other dating sites which try to match people based on interests and compatibility, Tinder is focussed purely on shallow connections based on instant attraction that then pushes people to seek out, for the most part, connections based on instant gratification.
Vanity Fair detailed a barrage of pleased young men, bragging about their “easy,” “hit it and quit it” conquests. The women, meanwhile, express nothing but angst, detailing an endless array of men who are rude, dysfunctional, and uninterested in anything other than casual sex.
These men call the women they bed “Tinderellas”. Except the reality is there’s no fairy tale ending for the women.
Tinder’s own strapline “It’s like real life, but better” gives an indication that Tinder mirrors the real dating world that also is wrapped up in an instant gratification throw-away culture based on casual sex without commitment.
Dating habits
Is Tinder (and apps like it) really the reason for our disintegrating relationship culture? I would say they are only part of the picture. The creation of these apps are simply adding fuel to a fire that already exists. They are an extension of real world dating habits where people are seen as objects to be used, rather than ‘for as long as we both shall live’ the focus is on ‘for as long as I can get something out of you’.
The difference perhaps is volume. With Tinder you can assess 30 people in two minutes rather than spend 30 minutes talking to a real life person. Of course there is temptation all around us, but Tinder and apps like it bring things to another level. It allows anyone to find casual sex within a short distance, and if you can’t find someone to hook up with straight way, with enough swipes soon enough you will.
Again, Tinder isn’t the only problem, it is a reflection of how sexualised our culture has become, it facilitates and encourages something that is already happening but allows it to happen in a more extreme way. You can swipe from left to right and within hours be sleeping with someone as if you were just ordering a take away. It compounds an increasingly empty culture that devalues the human person as a mere object to be used and discarded.
The idea that ‘sex sells’ is nothing new but these dating apps have commercialised people – we ourselves become the product to be gawked at and consumed, only to be discarded as part of the ‘no strings attached’ culture.
Not only are people engaging in self-destructive behaviour, but in many cases it is addictive. The average user goes on Tinder 11 times a day and spends 90 minutes browsing.
Engrained in our human hearts is the desire to love and be loved. The difficulty for a young person navigating the modern world of dating where ideas about attractiveness, love and relationships have become increasingly distorted is that this desire can be manipulated leading us to look for this love in all the wrong places.
A first step is to stop yourself from using anything that asks you to make a split-second judgment based on the picture on the screen in front of you, otherwise it is easy to become desensitised, looking at people as if they were objects.
Jesus’ words “Love one another as I have loved” simply doesn’t seem compatible with the ruthless Tinder swipe. But our faith challenges us to love people fully.
So how do we wade through this over sexualised digitised world as Catholics? Many young people are exploring these apps while they are still discovering who they are. They feel enormous pressure to partake in this soul-destroying meat market, with teenage girls dressing up like 30-year-old women and young men competing with one another to see who can get the most notches on their belt.
We have to be courageous and we have to be counter-cultural. It is about instilling respect in young men and women and reminding them of their infinite value. Saying it’s ok to treat a person like a thing rather than a person is demeaning for both sexes.
We are all searching and yearning for love, and the Church’s teaching on how we treat and love others is ultimately the tool to help us succeed in that quest.
We must focus on meaningful relationships motivated by selfless love radically opposite to the Tinder culture fuelled by lust which only seeks to take.
Central to this discussion is our increasingly shallow culture which places value on the most attractive profile picture.
Value
We must instil in ourselves and one another our innate God-given value that makes us recognise that we were made to love and to be loved. Whether we are cruising in a bar or swiping left to right, or taking 20 pouty pictures to get the one that is just right to allure and tantalise and ensure our ego gets massaged several times a day, we have to ask ourselves the question: Why? What is at the root of these actions? What is your intention?
Perhaps it is pride, or a need to feel validated, but ultimately at the root of those vices is the human desire for meaningful relationships which are unlikely to be found in actions rooted in our own selfish ends.
It is our job as Catholics to proactively challenge this in a revolutionary way. The world might be all about the surface but the Bible challenges that superficiality head-on. Every person is “fearfully and wonderfully made”, as Psalm 139 famously reminds us, intimately known and equally valued by God. Is this how we see people? Do our lives reflect that value in the way we treat others, not just in our romantic relationships, but in all our relationships? Do we make a concerted effort to challenge superficiality?
As Catholics we believe in something else. If we can witness to the love that Christ showed us, deep unconditional love, then I think people made bereft by the Tinder culture will be attracted to our natural joy.
Believe me, when our relationships develop based on a sacrificial love centred on Christ, those around you will notice the difference. Will it be easy to swim against the tide? No. Will it be worth it? Yes!
The actions that we as individuals take can have an impact on our culture. If a critical mass of women is willing to be used by the hook-up culture and men are eager participants, because that’s what everyone is doing these days, it affects everyone’s relationships. So too if a critical mass says no to shallow relationships and insists on connections that reflect our dignity, value, and worth then change can happen.
Live your life, be a bold witness to authentic fulfilling love and that will radiate from you and those who you love and you can be the change that our society so desperately needs.