A British man says he had to seek treatment for his Tinder addiction after swiping through 500 profiles a day.
Ed Turner, 27, has confessed to using the popular dating app compulsively just for the rush he felt when his profile was liked by fairer men and women. He confessed that he had no intention of actually meeting a woman or finding a partner. she.
“I would be devastated if they didn’t reply to me or message me in the first place,” Turner told the British publication. i News. “There were times when I got a high when I had a lot of matches with people I found attractive, but then there was always a crash, because that’s not sustainable.”
“Other people’s recognition was the only thing that kept me going,” he adds candidly.
Hooked on Tinder, Turner also downloaded dating apps Hinge and Bumble, swiping through every profile she could.
The Briton said he was only matched with “about 5 per cent” of women, and even fewer were willing to strike up a conversation.
Still, Turner regularly spent his days talking to 10 women at a time and waiting for them to respond.
“I was swiping right on everyone and completely absorbed in the ‘game’, so I completely lost my sense of self,” he admits wryly. “Dating apps have distorted reality by turning sex, communication, and love into actual games.”
Although he had no intention of actually meeting the match, some conversations quickly fizzled out, leaving the Brit feeling disappointed.
“Those apps affected my entire mood and personality,” Turner declared.
“I could never say what I was really looking for,” he said. “I started thinking, ‘Yeah, I have to ask this person out on a date or they’re going to stop talking to me.'”
“I thought I’d eventually have to tell people about the actual date. By the time I got to that point, I almost lost interest.”
Turner ended up having a relationship with a woman he met offline, but he still couldn’t stop thinking about the app.
“It made me feel like a bad partner. I didn’t do anything during the relationship, I never talked to women, but it affected me,” he said. “That feeling of elation is gone.”
After that relationship ended, Turner turned to Tinder again.
He eventually went to therapy, where he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and depression.
And while they’ve quit the app, singles are struggling to stay away from it while resisting the insatiable urge to start swiping again.
Turner isn’t the only one addicted to dating apps.
Match Group, the parent company of Tinder and Hinge, is currently facing a class action lawsuit from Gild users who say the apps are designed to trap users in a never-ending spiral of swipes rather than help them find love. Targeted.
The plaintiffs allege that Match’s “predatory” business model deceives people looking for love and afraid of missing out on an algorithm that rewards “compulsive use” of the platform.
