Tinder is celebrating next Monday in the decade when it will revolutionize the dating world by turning partner search into a kind of “game” where users find their suitors by swiping their finger to the right. left to go to the next profile.

Shantel Buggs, a professor in Florida State’s department of sociology, said, “Tinder has opened the door to other similar GPS-based apps, but has also adopted this floating structure in its apps for dating apps that aren’t structured that way.” University.

They’ve had 500 million downloads and over 70,000 million “matches” (links) worldwide over the course of ten years, as reported in an email by the dating app EFE.

The platform also noted that swipes or “swipes” (a kind of “like/dislike”) exceeded four billion in a single day.

An entertaining “game”

The expert underlines that the phenomenon of sliding from one side to the other not only makes the application easier to use, but also turns it into a kind of game or entertainment.

20-year-old Aldy, who lives in New York and does not want to give his last name, states that he often uses the application as if he is not looking at the profiles of real people.

“You swipe and swipe again, it’s almost like playing Candy Crush,” says the blue-haired girl, referring to the phone game where you have to match candies of the same color.

Her 22-year-old friend, Pilar, says she sometimes uses Tinder as a game between her friends: for example, you have to smoke (link) every time a photo of a man fishing pops up or someone in the group gets a “match”. between two users who are allowed to start a conversation).

The duo, who have the app in their pockets even though they don’t use it every day, say they don’t know a reality where swiping their finger from one side is not an option to find a mate.

“We grew up with Tinder, even before we had Tinder we were using Yellow, a Tinder for high school students. So even though we weren’t old enough to use Tinder, we had apps where you had to swipe to find a date.”

According to Tinder, half of its members belong to Generation Z (18 to 25 years old).

Harassment in Tinder

Buggs explains that during his work on the app, many people he spoke to said they were no longer interested in using the platform because of the harassment they experienced.

Aldy says he got a few inappropriate messages on Tinder. “Because of the way I dress, a lot of people think I’m a dominant person and the first message they send me is ‘press me’ or ‘ruin my life’. Not only am I dominant, but I also wonder why they started the conversation that way. It’s really frustrating and makes me want to stop using Tinder.”

Pilar, who usually uses the app to flirt with women, says that the messages she receives are completely different and that she starts the conversation by saying how beautiful the users are or whether they are meeting for a picnic.

Last year, Tinder introduced the following features: “Are you sure?” and “Does this bother you?” to reduce in-app bullying.