Here’s what’s causing dating app burnout, according to Hinge CEO

Sex & Relationships

By Brooke Steinberg

If you feel burnt out by dating apps, you’re not alone — and there’s a reason behind it.

Hinge CEO Justin McLeod revealed in a recent interview with the Financial Times that dating app fatigue is usually due to one of two reasons.

“One is that you are overwhelmed: there’s so much activity, and so many people, and everyone starts to look the same, and conversations are dying,” he explained.

The other reason, McLeod said, is a lack of reciprocation.

“At the other end of the spectrum, a lot of users get very, very little activity. They burn out because they’re trying to get that match, and they send a lot of likes, but then they’re not even getting enough [reciprocal] activity to go on one date.”

He added, “People want to spend more time out on dates, and less time on the app.”

Though McLeod claimed that Hinge is “the app that is very squarely trying to address burnout” by prioritizing quality over quantity, a recent study found that algorithms on dating apps substantially boost profiles with a high so-called “attractiveness score.”

“Even though dating platforms allow users to connect with others, questions regarding fairness in their recommendation algorithms remain,” study co-author Soo-Haeng Cho said in a statement.

Previous data has shown that just a small fraction of dating app users get most of the attention.

In a 2017 report from Hinge — which appears to no longer be available on the site but was previously cited by Quartz — found that the top 1% of men receive more than 16% of all likes on the app, while the top 1% of women get just over 11% of all likes.

The bottom 50% of men got just 4.3% of all likes and the bottom 50% of women got 7.9% of all likes.

A 2023 survey from Pew Research Center found that Americans are generally split over whether their experiences on dating apps were for the better or the worse.

Out of those surveyed, 53% said their experiences were at least somewhat positive while 46% said their experiences have been overall very or somewhat negative.

Hinge is now hoping that artificial intelligence can swipe in to help make more matches.

“The opportunity of AI is that it allows us to function more and more like a matchmaker that’s making really, really targeted introductions, and helping people put their best foot forward. Then it can really become, over time, about more and more quality, and less and less quantity — less and less people you have to go through in order to find the right one,” McLeod told the FT.

He explained that Hinge will analyze a user’s profile information, app behavior and feedback provided through the app in order to develop an algorithm.

“We ask people if it was a good date, so we actually have the information that we need to figure out: what are the components that lead to a good date? And how do we look for those, when we’re trying to match people up?”

Hinge isn’t the only platform utilizing AI for the dating scene. Tinder has been testing a feature that will allow artificial intelligence to select the best images of its users to optimize matchmaking.

Tinder is also attempting to progress the dating process with a new feature that will allow people in your life to make matches for you. Tinder Matchmaker lets a user’s friends and family access Tinder to recommend profiles for them.

But dating app fatigue has led singletons to other untraditional online platforms to find their match, such as language learning tool Duolingo or even Yelp.