Analysis Of Weeding Out Players Left And Right: One Swipe At A Time

Weeding out Players Left and Right: One Swipe at a Time

INTRODUCTION

Individuals used mass media and technology in the past to advertise their romantic desires and find connections that might have otherwise not been found. In 1695, personal ads were used to help British bachelors find suitable wives. In the 1800s, aristocrats used personal ads to advertise their interest in romantic engagements. In the early 1900s, rural ranchers, farmers, and shepherds in the West began using personal ads to find a life partner that might have otherwise eluded them from low populations in rural, western regions of the United States. In 1965, Operation Match, the world’s first computer dating service, was created by a team of Harvard undergrads. In 1995,

Most often used as a dating app, Tinder has further changed the dynamics of Millennial dating, people born between 1981 to 2002. With a swiping motion, users are able to choose between photos and their connected profiles, swiping right for desired matches and swiping left to move to the next potential match. Research shows that while men are less selective, women generally swipe right only for men they are seriously interested in (Lebowitz 2016), explaining why women swipe right only 14% of the time while men swipe right 46% of the time (Hakala 2015). Furthermore, women pick up matches quickly while men tend to gain matches slowly over time. When matched, approximately 21% of women send a message to a match while only 7% of men send a message (Emerging Technology from the arXiv 2016). As these statistics show significant gender differences, this paper will investigate whether Tinder reinforces gender stereotypes or if it actively breaks down traditional gender roles. It is hypothesized that Tinder does reinforce gender stereotypes but attracts individuals who are striving to break away from traditional gender

Rural ranchers, farmers, and shepherds in the West began using personal ads in the early 1900s to find a life partner who otherwise might have eluded them from low populations in the rural, western regions of the United States. With the rise of technology, a team of Harvard undergrads founded Operation Match, the world’s first computer dating service, in 1965; Match.com was created thirty years later in 1995, and EHarmony shortly after in 2000 (Lee