This study analyzed interviews with 11 past and present Tinder users to understand how and why people use the popular dating app. The interviews revealed that Tinder is used for a variety of purposes beyond just casual sex, contradicting popular media portrayals. Many users approach Tinder as a game to pass time by swiping through profiles. While physical attractiveness from photos is important, users have different strategies for profiles and messaging. Perceptions of Tinder depend on both individual experiences and societal narratives around dating and relationships.

1. UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND
Interpreting Tinderactions
A Study on How and Why People Use Tinder
William Rosemond
12/10/2014
Popular media has depicted smartphone app Tinder as an instrument for youth to secure
convenient casual sex, purporting it to be part of a modern 'hookup culture'. With Monto (2013)
suggesting that existence of this 'hookup culture' is heavily overestimated, the characterizations
of Tinder being a facet of it are questionable. This study analyzes 11 interviews of past and
present users of Tinder, finding that people use the app for a wide range of purposes other than
for casual sex.

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Introduction
Introduced in September of 2012 (Finnegan, 2013), the smartphone app Tinder has in two
years become an object of both intrigue and scrutiny for young adults and the media alike.
Tinder shows pictures of other nearby people who have the app, and the user shuffles through
these people by either swiping right to ‘like’ them, or left to ‘pass’ on them. If a user swipes right
on a person who also swiped them right Tinder ‘matches’ them—allowing the two to chat with
one another. If either of them swipe left, however, the other will not be notified, creating low
stakes for outright rejecting people. A user sees just the primary picture and the age of a person
at first, but can view a full profile before swiping. Full profiles are synced through Facebook and
consist of up to six pictures, a short free-text ‘bio’ section, the user’s age, distance from you, and
a list of mutual Facebook friends and liked pages. This process lends immediate comparison to
preexisting forms of online dating; however, popular depictions of the app highlight the
usefulness of this process for seeking out nearby partners with whom to have casual sex. Despite
that being the primary narrative involving the app, it’s common to hear Tinder users avidly
distancing themselves from this storyline, claiming to use it strictly for meeting others without a
sexual component or without the intention of meeting others at all. This study is aimed at finding
a more genuine range of how, when, and why people actually use Tinder.
Because of the recency of the Tinder phenomenon, almost all of the existing literature
focusing on Tinder is non-academic in nature. Countless newspapers, magazines, blogs, etc. have
published nearly identical pieces that do one of two things: briefly and objectively describe the
app and its background, or rely on one editorialist’s experience on the app and use that to
construct an opinion about the nature of Tinder and its implications about the types of people
who use it. In reality, due to its simplicity of format, the nature of Tinder is entirely dependent on

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what society makes it out to be. So, while these popular publications give us no information of
scientific merit, they are still critical to understanding how the public views and creates a frame
in which to place Tinder.
Before delving into the literature, from an informal conversational standpoint, there
seems to be an inescapable word association with ‘Tinder’ that perhaps tells us more about the
psyche of the societal context than it tells us about the app itself. This associated word is
‘hookups’, or some similar derivative of the concept of casual sex. Looking through the existing
publications regarding Tinder clearly highlights this perception of the app being used for
primarily sexual purposes. Emma Teitel in her article for Maclean’s magazine perfectly captures
the typical language used to describe the app, with a sub-headline boldly stating, “An app with a
fixation on no-strings-attached sex is supplanting dating sites.” She later reasserts this point; “an
unapologetic preoccupation with no-strings-attached sex is what sets Tinder apart from its
predecessors...perpetuating the phenomenon of ‘hook-up culture’ that college administrators and
Globe and Mail editorialists so often lament” (Teitel, 2014).
Echoing Teitel’s characterization of Tinder as a “hook-up app” are Joel Stein in Time,
Leah Reich in the New York Times, Daniel Roberts for Fortune (Reich, 2014) (Roberts, 2014)
(Stein, 2014). They each make extended use of the idea of casual sex as an essential aspect of
Tinder, typically featuring a quote or two from an anonymous Tinder user that reinforces claims
of Tinder being, “the most powerful hookup tool invented since fermentation” (Stein, 2014).
It would appear as though much of this narrative is borrowed from existing opinion
pieces in popular media that bemoan the advent of a more general “hook-up culture” that is
reported to plague the current generation of youth. This, however, raises a red flag as research by

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Monto suggests that young adults in this alleged “hook-up culture” have sex with no more
frequency or amount of people than in prior eras. Instead, the only notable difference Monto
observed is that those who are sexually active tend to have sex with friends or casual dates
outside of the traditional framework of a relationship (Monto, 2014). While this seems to support
an extent of the media perspective on sexual habits of young people, it doesn’t quite match the
sensational claims of a major cultural preoccupation on having sex with any given stranger and
never seeing one another again. Rather, it could point to more fluid types of relationships being
present with young people, with fewer boundaries between what constitutes a friend versus a
significant other.
Additionally Monto clarifies that the term ‘hook up’ actually refers to many potentially
different things depending on who is saying it. A college student may report that they ‘hooked
up’ with someone but be referring to just kissing, while another will use it to indicate full-
fledged sexual intercourse. The commonness of the term on college campuses and among young
people explains the perception of the abundance of casual sex being had, when in reality much of
its usage refers to things much more innocuous. With that in mind, it is important to keep in
mind that popular media’s characterization of Tinder as a hook-up app is limited in that it only
seen as something entwined with the hook-up culture that they purport it to be a part of.
Tinder describes itself more ambiguously. On their website, they simply state, “Tinder is
the fun way to connect with new and interesting people around you” (Tinder, Inc., 2014). The
cynics among us may state that this is a hollow statement they are almost obligated to make for
marketing and public image concerns, but in fairness there is nothing about Tinder that
necessitates its characterization as hookup app, or even a dating app. All Tinder actually does is
show a user the photos and free-text biography of other nearby users and if they happen to match

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each other, allows them to chat. It’s a framework that has the potential to take the shape of
whatever people end up using it for. The photos and content of a user’s profile is entirely
dependent on what they choose to put up. Likewise, the nature of the chat depends on the way
the user actually uses chat. One may not have control over the messages they receive, but they
have the full control over what they send and how. Hookups don’t just spontaneously happen on
Tinder, they require doing. They require the participation of people who use Tinder as a hookup
app.
But the framework that Tinder provides doesn’t have to be limited to those sorts of
possibilities. My informal observations suggested that many people use the app to find friends
(without a romantic or sexual agenda) upon moving to a new place, and even more simply use
the app for entertainment purposes, with no intention of ever meeting face to face with any of
their matches. More recently, people seem to even be taking business to it. Encountered on the
app have been hair-stylists seeking out new clients, drug dealers attempting to move their
product, and one mysterious individual inquiring about interest in a “serious business
opportunity.” Colao (2013) reports for Forbes that Tinder’s founders created the app with all
sorts of networking in mind, including for business. Roberts (2014) and Froelich (2014) also
address this particular angle of Tinder. This seems to be a small portion of the actual usage of
Tinder, however.
When not elaborating on its potential for securing casual sex, popular media frequently
characterizes Tinder as a distilled dating app of sorts. Literature studying more traditional online
dating has long affirmed the importance of the main medium encountered on Tinder; visual
communication in the form of profile pictures. An Australian study found that 85% of
interviewees who were online dating users would not consider contacting a user that did not have

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a photo on their profile (Whitty and Carr 2006). Since Tinder is connected through Facebook, it
is uncommon to find users without any pictures on their profile, but this fact helps illuminate the
desire to be able to place a physical identity on the person you’re interacting with.
Having a photographic reference helps to make the cyberspace between one person and
another seem smaller. Riegelsberger suggests that photo profiles allow the viewer to weed-out
people with whom they don’t want to interact (2006). This is supported by combining the
findings of Ellison (2006) and Norton, Frost, and Ariely (2007). Ellison found that people make
expansive inferences about others and the types of people they are based on limited cues in
online dating photographs, and Norton et al. adds that more photographic information about a
person leads to lowered feelings of affinity towards that person. Additionally, Hefner (2014)
claims that, “online dating allows people to be more selective.” It should be noted as well that
while the other studies focused within the context of online dating, Riegelsberger’s study
concerned photos in the online gaming community, which indicates that physical appearance is
an important criteria for separating those we do and do not want to have contact with in a range
of different types of online interactions. Fiore however, emphasizes that these perceptions are not
based solely on a person’s pictures: “…it is clear that the attractiveness of free-text responses
also plays a role in the attractiveness of the whole profile” (Fiore et al. 2008).
Again, with such a heavy emphasis on photos on Tinder, the importance of free-text in
perceptions of personality may be undermined. As one would expect, users display many
different strategies for writing their free-text biographies, some of the most common seeming to
be geographic indicators (which can be multidimensional in their implications) or categorizations
of why they are on Tinder (i.e. “not looking for hookups”). However, for every user that
meticulously chooses every word for their bio, a seemingly equal amount of users neglect adding

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anything at all to this bio section, either intentionally or not. This brings into question the actual
importance of this free-text, since, as expressed earlier, even viewing these sections are entirely
optional to users.
Petersen (2014) in a non-academic, yet well-executed, study uncovers a slightly different
idea of the traits that make us attracted to others in an online dating context. She placed stock-
photos of people exuding a number of different traits and fitting in to a range of stereotypes into
frames that mimicked the appearance of Tinder and instructed participants to answer what
race/religion/class/education-level they perceived the person to be, and if they would swipe no
for that person, a rational for doing so. Her results echo the idea that people fill in the blanks for
details that photographs cannot explicitly tell us, including religion, education, politics, and
personality features that are both dependent and independent on these categorical perceptions.
More interesting though, are Petersen’s findings indicate that participants have a strong
preference for people they perceive as well-educated and upper-middle class. Muddling
Petersen’s results, unfortunately, is her snowball-technique sampling method. The survey was
primarily administered through Facebook, beginning with her own Facebook friends. Thus it is
likely that many of the participants have similar backgrounds as one another, and that this
perhaps created an amplified favorability for the profiles they saw as most similar to themselves.
In an interesting non-academic study that was well circulated over the internet, Parker
constructed three separate profiles of herself wearing three different amounts of make-up and
compared the types of messages she received from men on each profile. She reports that on the
profile in which she wore no make-up, the messages she received were mostly friendly, asking
her how her day was or something similar. On her profiles with moderate and heavy make-up
(there didn’t seem to be much of a difference between the pictures she provided from these two)

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men were much more forward, commenting on her looks and asking right away if she would like
to meet up in person sometime. Parker concludes that “Their language seemed to reflect what
they thought of the woman behind the makeup,” and that these differences are remnants of “an
antiquated mind-set that a woman’s makeup/clothing reflects her sexual willingness.” (Parker
2014) Her first point seems well supported by her findings, and it makes sense to believe that
how a person sees another will have a bearing on how they interact, and how others perceive an
individual is largely influenced by how they choose to present themselves. So it would be
expected that people may have very different experiences on Tinder, based on how they present
themselves. Parker’s second point, however, seems a bit harsh seeing as she only reported one
incidence of a man sending an outright sexual message. It would appear that her own
expectations that men primarily look for casual sex through Tinder affected her perception of the
experience.
Methods
The participants for the study were a convenience sample consisting of five male and six
female past and present Tinder users, all known through my time at University of Portland. Their
ages ranged from 19-22. All but one interview took place in a study room in the university
library. The other interview was conducted in the home of the participant. Initially I included an
observational phase with my interviews. This consisted of recording the screen of the
participant’s phone as they used Tinder, then watching the recording together. The idea behind
this was to allow me to ask additional questions about specific behaviors exhibited one the app.
However, after the first few interviews, I removed this portion because the information gained
through it was surplus to for the preliminary nature of this study. The interview will consisted of
8 main questions aimed at gauging the range of uses and behaviors that individuals demonstrate

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on Tinder. Follow-up questions were asked when appropriate. Interviews we recorded via a
small portable microphone designed for capturing interview audio. Interviews typically lasted
between 30 and 45 minutes. The interviews were transcribed and coded to identify both common
and differentiated themes expressed between individuals.
Results
Throughout the participant interviews, three distinct but interrelated core themes
emerged. These were: how and why the participant uses Tinder, their perceptions of the nature of
Tinder, and their thoughts on what makes an attractive profile. While there was no shortage of
data for this last topic, it seemed to be touching on a larger subject area of psychosocial
attraction, and not within the ambitions of this study. So for the sake of cohesiveness, the results
section will focus on the numerous aspects contained within how people report using Tinder and
their perceptions of the nature of the app.
I. Tinder as a Game
Much of the media hype surrounding Tinder compares it to a game, the app itself seems
conscious of this as when a user gets matches with another user it displays a screen with the
options “Send message” or “Keep playing.” This game-like comparison was not lost on the
participants. Nearly all interviewees made reference to a raw entertainment value contained
within Tinder, and even those that didn’t specifically characterize it as a game described uses and
attitudes towards the app that could easily be classified with those who did. Users will typically
pull out Tinder when they have a lull in their day (i.e. waiting for class to start, just before going
to bed) and swipe through people for a brief amount of time before carrying on with their day,

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not dissimilar to the casual manner in which traditional smartphone games are played. Daniel,
when asked why he used Tinder summed up this attitude:
I’d say more like, just general entertainment. Like a lot of the apps that they have out there, just something
to sort of do when you’re bored. Just sort of a fun thing to do, I guess.To like swipe through people and to
see what’s going on out there.
Game-like attitudes are especially salient for explaining the motives among those who
did not intend to use Tinder for meeting up with people. Kate, a female user, describes the
experience as “getting flashcards of people,” with fast, rapid-fire judgment of people being the
essential gameplay mechanic, almost never taking the time to even look past the main picture of
a person before swiping. Others describe a slower method, taking the time to look at the full
profiles of all or some of the people they find, incorporating more aspects of people-watching.
Either way, all participants, even those with very little investment in Tinder, reported feeling a
very real excitement upon receiving a match. This indicates a driving factor behind using Tinder
beyond just observational musings: an investment, however small, in a particular result happing
upon swiping right on a person—that the match be reciprocated.
For some people, the idea of Tinder as a game bears even more depth. The end goal of
using Tinder becomes the accumulation of a large number of matches with others who are
deemed to be desirable. Both male and female participants reported turning Tinder into a friendly
competition with friends, to see who could get both the higher amount and better quality of
matches. Positive feelings when receiving a reciprocated match are not dissimilar to those that a
gamer would have when completing a level accomplishing a task in the game. The desire to
attain these feelings is the driving factor in continued involvement both on Tinder and in

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traditional gaming. Interviewees were mostly conscious of this as well, making reference to the
ego or esteem boost that one gets from receiving matches.
Tinder as a Group Activity
Interviewees often mentioned the process of using Tinder while with friends and other
people, as a form of in person bonding. Depictions of this ranged from lazily lounging on the
couch swiping through people and occasionally showing off a particularly interesting profile, to
drunkenly passing the phone around at a party seeing who can come up with the most offbeat
pickup line. Although most people didn’t describe taking the app very seriously in general, it
gets taken even less seriously when used with other people. Macy sums up this idea:
“I’d say when I do it with friends, I mess with people more. And it’s more for like, entertainment
purposes...it tends to be like more flirty or more fun.”
Tinder becomes even more game-like when used in this way because people are challenging and
encouraging one another to be more and more ridiculous in the way that they use it, further
reducing how seriously they view the app. Media often laments how when spending time with
others, people are glued to their smartphones rather than actively enjoying the company around
them (Hu, 2013) (Gonzalez, 2013). Tinder, when used as a group activity, seems to both support
and refute these complaints, centering on the phone but also providing a common talking point or
an entertaining way to mess with random people without any repercussions.
Tinder as Cyber People-Watching
One of the most common aspects of Tinder that people highlighted was the social
observational gratification that it provides. Participants expressed that there’s joy to be had in
simply swiping through profiles for the purpose of looking through the types of people that are

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nearby on Tinder. Al, a male user describes that his friends send him screenshots of amusing
profiles that they run into so as to share the enjoyment of observing. He also claims that cyber
people-watching is “one of the easiest ways to describe the app,” elaborating that,
These people are purposely portraying themselves like this, and they can’t see you watch them…you can
say anything you want and the person will never find out.Or you can have any form of reaction and the
person will never be able to look at you and…see that reaction that you’re having to what they look like,
what they’re portraying, or what they’re saying.
Al sees the appeal in this form of observation lying in the increased power of judgment that you
have when there is a screen between you and the other person; others echoed similar mindsets of
finding joy in the ability to be more judgmental than normal.
This idea of Tinder as a means to people watch seems to simply be a facet of using it as a
game: more of an aspect of the nature of the app as transcending lines between reality and
constructed fiction. People watching only carries interest if the people being watched are
grounded in some sort of actuality, a topic more thoroughly addressed in the following section.
II. Tensionin the Reality behind Tinder
Providing additional intrigue to this process is the tension that Tinder draws between the
actual existence of the people on the app and the depersonalized manner in which a user
encounters them as they are swiping through.
Uh, so the main use for me is just entertainment, just like any game app, which is kind of terrible now that I
think about it. I dunno,it’s just uh—it’s purely, like, for the entertainment…I don’t know, “game” is a
weird way to say it, but uh, it’s just fun to like, look through people and be judgmental I guess.
Anonymously,you know?

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There is an underlying reality to all interactions that take place on Tinder because the user knows
that each profile is representative of a person who actually exists beyond the context of the app.
Yet that person’s existence doesn’t ever have to be completely realized in the life of the user.
Many people will be swiped left within a matter of seconds, forever out of existence within the
user’s Tinderverse. Thinking about there being actual people attached to the profiles would
hypothetically make it more straining to ruthlessly swipe through people based on snap
judgments about what kind of person they are based on the very limited, perhaps arbitrary,
information provided in the profiles. Instead, it’s much easier to view the profiles simply as
“flashcards of people,” removed from their actual states of being and only in existence within the
context of the app.
Several interviewees made comments related to this depersonalized nature of Tinder,
showing a degree of sensitivity to the issue. John told me, “It’s totally bad, because you’re just
like, objectifying people.” But he quickly rationalized it, “But I guess it’s okay because
everybody’s doing it to everybody.” Jennifer described herself as “a terrible person” after
explaining how she automatically swipes a person left at the first sign of anything related to the
Seattle Seahawks in their profile, suggesting recognition that it may be harsh to swipe that person
out of her life based on such a narrow piece of information, yet was unapologetic about it. People
tended to see these judgments as simply part of the nature of Tinder, afforded by the amount of
anonymity the app provides to the user. So while they may experience a slight cognitive
dissonance about exhibiting these types of judgmental behaviors, they accounted for it in that
they were just using Tinder in the way that one is supposed to use it.
This line of tension between real life and game-like mind-sets carries through in an
interesting manner as people are choosing which direction to swipe a profile. Every one of my

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participants elaborated on some sort of criteria for ‘liking’ someone, as opposed to an attitude of
just mindlessly swiping right for everyone in hopes of accumulating as many matches as
possible. Surely, the latter is the primary technique for some people out there, but many people
seem to have a vested interest in having the people they actually get matched with meeting these
different standards that they look for.
Characteristics that were sought after unanimously included perceptions of physical
attractiveness, seen in relation to specific physical attributes that were consciously recognized as
desirable by the user both inside and outside of the context of Tinder. Examples of these include
preferences towards height, particular hair colors and style, etc. Interests and lifestyles that the
user has in common or finds interesting were screened by looking at the contexts of the photos in
a user’s profile, as well as information provided in the bio section.
While this isn’t altogether unexpected, it was surprising to find that many of the
interviewees who were most fervent about never using Tinder for the purpose of meeting up with
people reported the most strict conditions to be met before swiping right on someone. Often
times the same people referenced hypothetical scenarios for meeting people on Tinder, minutes
after decreeing that they would under no circumstances actually meet a person they matched with
on the app. When queried about these contradictory types of answers, Kate, who was probably
the interviewee most militant about not letting cross the line into real-life, explained:
I think I had an underlying standard just in case like some guy messaged me and somehow we managed to
like end up talking…or what if we ran into each other or we had mutual friends. So like, I didn’t go into it
[Tinder] like, needing something, nor wanting something, nor do I want anything now. It’s more just like, if
there was a possibility presented I would at least like to have my standards met so that I knew I would at
least be able to reciprocate the person’s interested without hurting their feelings…

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Bridget described how her current lack of time to partake in dating altogether was also reflected
in her use of Tinder as just a leisurely app to browse, until she encountered a “golden boy of
Tinder,” who became an outright exception to the rest of her usage because she actually wanted
to meet him. She never did though, and she speculates that he had a similar mindset as her when
it came to reluctance to meet people from Tinder.
It would appear as though the underlying potential for an interaction with someone on
Tinder to come to fruition with meeting that individual in person plays an important, albeit
subconscious, role in the engagement of the user with the app. Even if they identify and use
Tinder as a game-like app, there’s an intriguing factor in the idea that it could easily transcend
into reality.
III. Tinder as a Way to MeetPeople
A majority of my participants stated having used Tinder for the purpose of meeting
matches in person on one or more occasions. While the term thrown around to denote this
activity is “Tinder Date,” interviewees described an interaction that doesn’t quite fit into the
traditional concept of what a ‘date’ is. Instead, it’s something far more casual. Media has
described the app as a gateway to a user finding others with which to find ‘no-strings-attached’
sex, but users depicted a process of no-strings-attached dating. Ted, simply stated that he uses
Tinder for “lazy dating,” elaborating that his mindset while using the app is, “how lazy can I be
and maybe get a date?” He highlights the lowered fear of rejection a user faces while swiping
through people and while messaging matches as central to the function of this mindset. It allows
one to casually pursue a potential romantic interest without needing to invest oneself into the
outcome of events with that person.

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Others don’t even feel the need to label their interests in the people they encounter on the
app as romantic in nature. When asked to characterize her interests in the people she interacts
with on Tinder, Jessica clarified:
Not like, romantic in the ‘I want to marry you’ sort of way, but I mean like, ‘I want to do things with you.’
So it depends on what your definition of romantic is…I think it kind of isn’t like, serious. It’s kinda like,
‘yeah let’s see how out conversation goes and then maybe from there we can have something.’
So while, she does actually go on ‘dates’ with people she is matched with, she doesn’t feel any
obligation or pressure to treat it as anything beyond what it is on the surface: two people who
think one another look interesting and want to meet to simply get to know each other. Most other
participants who used Tinder to meet people portrayed a similar lax attitude toward rigidly
defining the nature of the relationships with the people they are meeting. Many explained that
they were primarily looking for new friends through the app, but would not be opposed if a
person turned into a more romantic pursuit should they find that they have chemistry or interest
that surpasses what they would want from a friendship.
Additional motives for meeting people were expressed by a handful of participants. Two
female users both laughed as they told me that agreeing to go on Tinder Dates was a fun and
convenient way to get a free dinner. This didn’t seem to be a primary motive however, as they
asserted through other comments that they wouldn’t meet up with person unless there was that
interest to get to know them. But the role of free food being offered shouldn’t be understated; the
presence of such an offer would more than likely bridge the gap for a person on the borderline of
someone they would and would not want to meet. This emphasizes the convenience of Tinder for
pursuing entertainment or leisure activity, providing a quick way to find someone who would

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give the user attention and perhaps providing an additional incentive for using Tinder in this way
in the form of food.
One male user said that he met up with people primarily to practice his interpersonal
skills with people that he’s meeting for the first time. He wouldn’t have minded if they continued
to be friends (or more) after the meeting, but that was not the goal that he had in mind when
getting together with a match. Although this indicates a different motivation for arranging a
meeting, it still echoes a similar fluid tone regarding the nature of the relationship with those
who he would meet.
Almost all of the participants who didn’t actively use it with the intention of meeting up
with people—including some people who had met one or more people from Tinder—expressed a
belief regarding the essentially romantic nature which flies in the face of the attitudes portrayed
by those who do actively use it for the purposes of meeting. These users explained that they
didn’t think it would be possible to meet a person without the pretense of it being a romantic
encounter in nature because of the emphasis that if placed on interpersonal attraction when
swiping and making matches.
It’s strange that they’re using Tinder as a way to make friends almost necessarily. Because I think most
people think of it as a—meet in a more serious manner.
It may be indicative that these users prefer to have their relationships with others more rigid
rather than flexible, although it is hard to see where the cause of these disparities in belief of the
nature of Tinder lies.

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Tinder for Casual Sex
None of my interviewees claimed to have used, or have any desire to use Tinder as a way
of securing easy, casual sex. Several did, however, report their perceptions of the prevalence of it
within the context of Tinder. Carl claimed to have several friends that use the app exclusively for
‘hookup’ purposes, and many others speculated at the fact that it seems to be commonplace
based mostly on the types of people they encounter while swiping or the types of messages they
receive. Although, aside from Carl, those making these speculations acknowledged that they did
not personally know anyone using Tinder for such purposes. With no actual data to report on
this, it’s not possible to go into depth in this section aside from making the important statement
that many, many users have purposes of use far removed from this stereotype and that Tinder
serves a role in society that isn’t isolated to just casual sex.
IV. Changes in Usage
Initial Involvements
Most interviewees made comments about why they first started using Tinder, typically
these descriptions weren’t very detailed, which suggests an overall lack of investment or thought
process involved with deciding to download it. The dominant reason that people reported
initially downloading the app is that they heard their friends talking about it and were curious to
see firsthand what the buzz was all about. Only two of my participants reported an initial
intention to download the app for the purpose of meeting up with others, although most used it
for that purpose at least once during their active usage of Tinder. Instead, the majority claimed
that they were simply checking out what it was without taking it seriously at first, but also saw it
as an interesting way to explore their curiosities about who was around in their neighborhoods.

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Originally I was like, ah I’m just gonna joke around, look at some people. See who’s —who’s around, what
do people look like…just kind of a joke.
A handful of others stated slightly different reasons for initially downloading Tinder: one
female user said her friends encouraged her to get on the app after just getting out of a four-year
relationship, hoping the esteem boost harvested from reciprocated matches and complimentary
messages would help her to move on from the relationship. Another female user similarly
recounts that she first used Tinder when she became frustrated with her potential romances
tending to fizzle out anti-climatically, and that she turned to it once again recently after ending a
month-long relationship.
Changes over Time
Several participants described shifts in what they were hoping to get out of Tinder over
time. A common theme here were users that originally had ambivalence or apprehension toward
the idea of meeting people from Tinder but eventually ended up using it to meet up with a person
on one or more occasions. A female user explains:
The more comfortable I became with the site I was like, “I mean, would it really be that bad to go on a date
with somebody?” Like, what if it…turns out to be really awesome?
At the time she downloaded the app, assumptions were made about the types of people she
would encounter based on a general stigma casting Tinder as an app for hookups. However, as
she spent more time on the app, she encountered enough people who shared similar reservations
and reasons for using the app to change this view. As demonstrated by the case of Bridget and
her “Golden Boy of Tinder,” it can also be one particularly intriguing individual that can spark a
user to reconsider their notions of what a Tinder facilitated meeting would be like. Ted, despite

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being a user who did not report feeling reluctance to meet people in general through Tinder,
sums up what the thought process behind this seems to be:
The first girl that actually I asked, because I had talked to her for so long that I felt comfortable already.
That I actually wanted to meet her, and…it would more likely be better to meet her than to not meet her.
Al and Sally, the only interviewees to identify the possibility of meeting people as a
primary reason for downloading Tinder, experienced a shift in the opposite direction. They both
used it to find new people to spend time with on a non-romantic basis while school was out of
session and their friends were elsewhere. Once school resumed and their friends returned both of
their use of the app dropped to almost nothing apart from occasional swiping for entertainment
purposes.
Discussion
Response to Media Portrayal
My findings refute the common media perception of Tinder and its uses being primarily
an instrument for young individuals to secure convenient, casual sex with others. Interestingly,
this perception was shared by my interviewees as well, despite the fact that none of them use it
for those purposes and sometimes acknowledging that it seems like most of the people they
encounter are on Tinder for similar reasons they are: either for nonchalant game-like uses or for
entertaining the idea of meeting up with a person without a sexual or even romantic component.
Comparable to the seemingly overstated conclusions of a sexual pretense on Tinder made by
Parker in her nonacademic study, it appears that user’s expectations that Tinder is predominantly
used for casual sex ultimately plays a large role in how they see the app. If one downloads
Tinder with this perception of its sexual nature, they will continue to see it as such even after

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acknowledging that most others do not use it for sex. Only one participant, Jennifer, expressed
receiving sexualized messages with noteworthy volume, and she described her profile pictures
saying, “It’s not like I’m completely naked, but I mean that’s kind of like flirty.” She also
elaborated on her taste in men, “probably the douchier they look the more likely I’ll like, look at
them.” So one could jump to the conclusion that the manner in which one presents themselves
and the people that they choose to swipe plays a bigger role in the experience they will have on
Tinder. But even at that, Jennifer detailed many interactions through Tinder, including meeting
people, which were not sexual in nature. Some participants supposed that a few people
successfully use Tinder for casual sex, while others may entertain the idea of doing so and send
out provocative messages, but either get shot down by the other person or simply not follow
through themselves.
The reason people seem to hold on to this mindset of the underlying sexual nature of
Tinder is largely down to the media portrayal of it as that, and studying how frequently the app is
used for casual sex, along with the mindsets of those using it for that, would be a very salient
area of further research. It should be noted that one of my participants did mention that he has
friends using Tinder primarily for casual sex, and told me that he talked to them to see if they
would be interested in participating in an interview as well, but they were not willing. It may be
that a study focusing on those who do use Tinder for casual sex would be much harder to find
willing participants for, because of the stigma surrounding this process, led by negative media
portrayals of the app and ‘hookup culture’.

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De-rigidified Attitudes towards Dating
One of the more surprising concepts the interviews uncovered was relatively undefined
nature of association participants reported while meeting up with people. There was a general
attitude that the relationship need not be defined as specifically romantic or platonic. It could be
that this is indicative of a cultural attitude which has less interest than in the past for strictly
characterizing what a friendship is supposed to be versus what a romantic relationship consists
of. However, there appears to be no studies that touch on this issue. A Time article expresses the
opinion that dating has remained the same throughout modern time, it’s just the means of doing
it that have changed, but this isn’t backed by anything scientific (Kluger, 2014). Monto’s
findings indicate that more sexual relations are happening outside of the traditional idea of a
romantic relationship (Monto, 2014), which could indicate that romance is also happening
outside of relationships or less prevalent altogether.
Meanwhile, Pew Researchers have found that less Americans are marrying than in the
past (Wang & Parker, 2014), which may indicate a reduced perceived need to marry in order to
achieve self-fulfillment. This may trickle down to the dating scene, suggesting that in general
young adults feel less pressured to define a relationship as romantic because marriage is no long
seen as a desired end goal for romance. A study found that a majority of online daters “expressed
interest in seeking fun, companionship, and someone to talk to…Most also reported interests in
developing casual friendships and dating relationships with online partners” (Stephure, 2009),
which supports the attitudes presented in my findings. Beyond that, a literature search did not
provide anything else to support or refute that traditional dating or online dating is becoming a
more fluid, less rigid endeavor. Further research could address whether the fluid relationships
detailed by interviewees is indicative of broader cultural trends.

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Limitations
There were some obvious limitations in my study. My sample consisted entirely of
people with whom I was acquainted through the private, Catholic university I attend. This could
have contributed to the fact that none of my participants reported using it for casual sex. Other
variables may have been affected by the demographic similarity of my interviewees as well. So
while these results cannot be considered the entire picture of Tinder usage, they provide a useful
look at the way Tinder is used by individuals who are not looking for casual sex or a serious
relationship.
Throughout the interviews, there was a large amount of data collected about the different
aspects of a profile that attract a user to an individual. I decided not to address those in very
much depth at all because they didn’t seem to have too much bearing on the ways that people
used Tinder and would have detracted from the continuity of the paper. However, this topic is
interesting nonetheless and should be looked into with closer, more specialized attention.
Additionally, each of the topics actually covered in this paper could be deserving of their own,
more focused research.
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