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The introduction of cell phone dating apps led to a substantial rise in sexual activity among college students without a corresponding increase in committed relationships. While these platforms coincided with higher reports of sexual assaults and sexually transmitted diseases, they surprisingly did not worsen average mental health and even offered slight psychological boosts for some women. The findings appear in a massive study published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.
Today, online matchmaking is the most common way heterosexual adult couples form relationships in the United States. Before 2013, the idea of digital matchmaking belonged to a niche industry mostly populated by desktop websites. Mobile applications equipped with location tracking and immediate notifications completely transformed the industry standard.
Following the mainstream expansion of mobile dating platforms in the early 2010s, public narratives often blamed these applications for promoting casual romance. Commentators also speculated that digital matchmaking skewed dating market fairness and harmed the mental health of young people. Economists Berkeren Büyükeren, Alexey Makarin, and Heyu Xiong wanted to measure exactly what sorts of behavioral shifts occurred when these technologies first hit the college market.
Economic theory provides a framework for understanding how digital matching tools alter dating habits. Meeting people in person requires time, effort, and social navigation, which acts as a friction that slows down relationship building. By lowering search costs and eliminating the fear of unreciprocated rejection, cell phone applications theoretically allow individuals to experiment more widely. The researchers hypothesized that easier matching would increase the volume of casual dates while prolonging the search for a permanent partner.
Because a simple public observation does not prove that an app changed human behavior, the research team searched for a historical quirk that would isolate the technology’s effects. They turned to the early marketing strategies of Tinder. When the company launched its trademark swipe interface in 2013, its executives deliberately targeted universities. They focused their initial efforts on socially influential fraternities and sororities.
The platform relied on network effects to succeed. An application based on finding local singles only works if thousands of local singles install it on their phones. To guarantee a dense network of early adopters, the company sent brand ambassadors directly to campus housing organizations to sign people up. The business even subsidized off-campus parties where the only cost of admission was downloading the app.
To confirm this historical narrative, the researchers analyzed over 700,000 articles from college newspapers published between 2013 and 2016. Campuses with an active Greek life presence published vastly more stories about the platform than those without. The study authors also checked national search engine trends, finding that search intensity for the application spiked highest in towns hosting universities with known fraternity networks.
Because of this aggressive campaign, students in fraternities and sororities adopted the application much faster and in far greater numbers than the rest of the student body. The researchers verified this early adoption trend by analyzing anonymous cell phone location data pinpointed to specific university postal codes. They proved that areas with dense fraternity networks maintained much higher daily application usage rates than regions without them. The research team then used this targeted rollout as a natural experiment, comparing the habits of affiliated students against their nonaffiliated peers both before and after the summer of 2013.
To see how student habits changed, the team analyzed responses from the National College Health Assessment. The American College Health Association distributes this questionnaire every semester across hundreds of universities to gather data on the physical and psychological condition of young adults. This massive study sample included 1.1 million full-time undergraduate students surveyed between 2008 and 2019.
Büyükeren and his colleagues found that the app caused a pronounced increase in sexual behavior. After 2013, members of fraternities and sororities reported a sizable jump in the average number of sexual partners compared to unassociated students. Students affiliated with fraternities and sororities were also several percentage points more likely to report having had sex in the past month.
Despite this bump in casual encounters, the application did not lead to more long-term romantic commitments. The researchers found no bump in the share of students living with a partner or maintaining stable romantic relationships. The survey responses also showed no meaningful change in whether students experienced relationship difficulties.
The technology also changed the distribution of dating success, creating a superstar effect where a smaller group of people claimed a large share of the dating market. The researchers noted an outward shift in the distribution of sexual encounters, meaning the most active top tier of users scored a disproportionate bulk of the total matches. This dating inequality was especially pronounced among male users, meaning an exclusive segment of men secured large gains while others saw none.
The increase in sexual activity also brought elevated physical risks and safety concerns. Data regarding nonconsensual encounters mirrored the uptick in casual dating. Reports of sexual assault jumped by two percentage points following the application’s introduction. Because the baseline rate for sexual assault in the massive survey was roughly nine percent, a two percentage point increase represents a sizable bump in total campus incidents.
Alongside the higher incidence of bacterial infections like chlamydia, testing for the human immunodeficiency virus rose by over one percentage point. The researchers noted that this spike in testing might reflect proactive health measures by students aware of their increased exposure risks. Rather than solely indicating an actual spread of the virus, the volume of tests suggests users acknowledged the dangers of casual romance.
Despite broader societal anxieties regarding social media and depression, the introduction of the swipe-based application did not deteriorate average mental health scores. Instead, the researchers recorded a slight improvement in psychological well-being among fraternity and sorority members compared to their peers. This positive shift was highly visible among female students across several markers of clinical distress, including a drop in severe depression and reported instances of intentional self-harm.
The data also indicated a relative drop in the prevalence of eating disorders among women following the app’s introduction. The study authors suspect that the digital dating platform may have provided a psychological lift that counterbalanced the usual stressors of undergraduate life. Receiving consistent romantic attention and dozens of daily digital matches may have functioned as a temporary confidence boost that improved overall body image.
The study relies on self-reported survey answers, which always carry the risk of response bias. Still, the questionnaires were anonymous, which helps reduce the incentive for students to lie about their romantic lives or medical histories. The researchers also noted that people who artificially inflated their sexual success would be unlikely to simultaneously invent stories of sexual assault or disease.
Another limitation involves the presence of social blending on a shared college campus. Students outside of fraternities and sororities still interacted with affiliated students and downloaded the application, though at a lower initial rate. When the researchers factored in these broader campus usage rates in alternative models, the core trends in sexual activity held steady.
Future research could explore exact behavioral data from individual user profiles rather than relying on broader campus membership categories. Additional studies might also examine how dating applications alter relationship paths for older adults outside of isolated university environments.
The dating market operates as a precursor to the marriage market. Understanding how digital tools influence initial romantic matches helps economists predict longer-term demographic shifts. While popular culture often blames technology for modern relationship struggles, this research indicates that dating apps successfully fulfill their original design promises by maximizing short-term romantic connections.
The study, “The Impact of Dating Apps on Young Adults: Evidence from Tinder,” was authored by Berkeren Büyükeren, Alexey Makarin, and Heyu Xiong.