Young Victorian singles rely on dating apps like Tinder and Bumble to play cupid

YOUNG Victorian singles have accepted dating apps as a “necessary evil” in their lives and are swiping their way to love despite wishing they could meet suiters more traditionally.

YOUNG Victorian singles have accepted dating apps as a “necessary evil” in their lives and are swiping their way to love despite wishing they could meet suiters more traditionally.

A University of Melbourne study also revealed Millennials saw dating apps like Tinder as a tool to meet people they would not have the confidence to approach.

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Erik Sherman uses apps to find people to date. It hasn't been all success but he and most of his friends rely on them to meet people. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

“It (using apps) was seen as the only way you date in modern times,” study co-author Brendan Churchill said.

“It was a necessary evil.”

Despite regularly deleting the applications from their phones, singles would often redownload Tinder because they felt meeting people in real life was not possible.

“They would fall on these romantic ideas of ‘oh I’d like to meet someone in a book store, oh I’d like to meet someone in a bar’,” Mr Churchill said.

“But they couldn’t see how that might happen.”

First dates between people who met online usually happened within the first week of talking or never at all.

“If there wasn’t an initial date within the first week, these kinds of tinder conversations never eventuated to dates,” Mr Churchill said.

“They (app users) had a lot of conversations and dates didn’t necessarily materialise. It was a lot of emotional labour.”

Study participants listed home as the top place to stop and swipe for suiters, followed by public transport, university and TAFE.

Almost forty per cent of respondents also admitted to using the app at work.

Brunswick East student Erik Sherman, 24, has been using dating apps for five years and exclusively dates people he meets online.

“I was on an app for a year before I had the guts to meet up with someone,” he said.

“But as I got more and more comfortable and I realised it was the reality now, that process sped up.

“I like to meet people pretty quickly now because in person they are really so much better or so much worse than they are online.

Apps allowed the student to connect with people he wouldn’t otherwise have the confidence of going and speaking to at a bar.

“It’s so much easier for people to send a message because then you don’t need to face rejection,” he said.

“People were always superficial. Apps just make it more obvious.”

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