A Tinder success story

Are online dating apps a tried and tested way to meet your perfect partner, or just a facilitation for a temporary hook-up?

With more people than ever now using online dating apps to find a potential partner, Rebecca Wright speaks with two recent university graduates who shared their Tinder success story.

Tinder: the story so far

The app was launched in September 2012 by two students at the University of Southern California
To date, it has an estimated 50 million worldwide users- 79% of which are reported to be millennials
26 million matches are made daily, with 10 billion matches made since the app’s launch
It is estimated that only 54% of Tinder users are single
The average user spends 35 minutes on the app per day
Male users ‘swipe right’ to an average of 46% of potential matches, whilst women swipe to only 14% of potential matches.

In the office-come-laundry room of a two-bedroom flat in the centre of Canterbury, Hannah Cullen and Alex Wright sit side by side dressed in their pyjamas. They are the image of a young and professional couple. Damp clothes are hung from the window panes, as they struggle for space in such a small dwelling. Their hamster rattles on its wheel in the corner of the room.

It’s the end of a long working day - 23-year-old Hannah has just returned home from her usual eight hours of teaching at the local primary school, and Alex, also 23 and a postgraduate student, has spent another day researching polymers at the University of Kent.

Their Tinder story began back in 2014 - just two years after the app’s launch and whilst both were still undergraduate students at university.

For those who are uninitiated, Tinder is a smartphone app on which you upload photos of yourself and ‘swipe right’ for other users that you find attractive, or ‘swipe left’ for those you aren’t interested in, based on your location. If both parties swipe right, a match is made. You’re then prompted to send a message or to keep playing - it’s almost like the more up to date, high tech version of ‘Hot or Not’. The ‘keep playing’ culture that has arisen on the app has amounted to an estimated total of 26 million matches being made every single day.

But how many of these actually lead to a conversation, or even to a successful relationship?

Alex and Hannah have been together for a little over two years now, and they both have Tinder to thank for bringing them together.

Talking about her early experience of the online dating app, Hannah told me: “I had Tinder for about five months before I met Alex in the November of 2014. At first I used to go on it with the girls at university, but only ever as a joke. I went on a date with one other person from the app before I met Alex, but that didn’t work out… Clearly!”

Alex’s Tinder presence, however, was much shorter. “I probably had my account for about two weeks or a month before we met. We spoke for maybe a week before we went on a date. I downloaded it mostly for fun but I sort of wanted to find someone.”

He says, jokingly: “There’s a Tinder rule - if you don’t organise to meet someone within three days of talking, then you just have to forget it! That’s the rule…

“Not really- I made that up.” He laughs.

They proceed to tell me about their early messages before they went on their first date, with Alex insisting he couldn’t remember the first message he sent to Hannah…

“Awh,” Hannah says. "Am I embarrassing you?” She laughs, touching Alex’s shoulder as she then reveals: “He said to me “You’ve got beautiful eyes!”… I was going to ignore it!”

“Did I?” said Alex. “That’s probably the same as what I said to everyone else!” he jovially replied, looking cheekily at Hannah beside him.

As their laughter fades, they tell me how online dating is different to meeting people in real life.

Hannah describes: “If I was in a bar, I would never go up to someone and speak to them – I just find that embarrassing and I’m not confident enough to do it! With Tinder, though, what you’re doing all the time is approaching strangers through messages, so it’s easier to do.”

Alex nods in agreement, adding: “I’d probably have gone up to someone in a club if I was drunk enough, though!”

As little as a month after their first meeting, the two made their relationship official. Aware that there is often a stigma around telling the friends and family of Tinder users how they first met their partner, I asked if Hannah and Alex were honest with people about their experience. Alex told me: “I’m more honest than Hannah is with telling people that we met on Tinder. At the start, Hannah didn’t want to tell her family that we met on Tinder so we used to tell them we met in a bar. Most of the time you would have to explain to your parents what Tinder actually is before they would understand!”

“I found the idea of telling them a bit awkward, I guess. It’s almost like at our age we shouldn’t have to worry about going on dating websites or apps, so the idea of telling them seemed quite strange”, Hannah tells me.

Alex adds: “I thought ‘proper’ online dating websites like Match.com and Eharmony were aimed at people much older than us, but it seemed that Tinder was more acceptable for people our age. I felt more comfortable using it and telling people that it was how we met.”

But is there still a significant stigma around meeting people through online dating apps, or is it just a fear of how people will react?

Hannah continues: “There isn’t as much of a stigma around online dating apps anymore, though. It’s quite common now - a lot of people these days do meet online and on apps. When my friends started using Tinder before me I had a bit of a judgemental view of it. I’d ask “Why are you on that?” and they’d tell me to download it just for a laugh.

“At first I thought they’d end up talking to people they knew nothing about- you don’t know who they are- but then I got it and I met Alex, and I really changed my mind!”