Are Dating Apps Losing Their Charm?

There has been a noticeable shift away from dating apps in recent years, as more people are taking their dating game off the Internet

- Ravi Raj

In 2023, after eight months of sailing across Europe, Ritabhash Bagchi, the 27-year-old mariner, decided to join the dating apps. Bagchi had a vibrant social life in Kolkata, but he felt finding dates through apps was something he always wanted to try. "It was nothing but the FOMO that compelled me to sign up," says Bagchi, fresh out of a tumultuous breakup that happened when he was still on the ship. The blip sound of receiving new matches spiked up his adrenaline, but things would always fizzle, sometimes after initial exchanges, other times after days of talking.

On a few occasions when the matches were converted into dates, the experience was not something he was hoping for. "The digital persona often misled me into making certain assumptions that differed vastly when it came to real-life personality, and unluckily the differences were irreconcilable in my experience," says Bagchi, who has long deleted these apps from his phone.

Bagchi is not alone in sharing the dating app fatigue; more millennials and Gen Z are exploring other avenues to find potential dates than relying on dating apps. As swift as the rise of dating apps has been this decade, the fall seems to be even brisker, with many millennials and Gen Z taking things into their own hands, rather than depending on an algorithmic-driven method.