In around 2014, online dating dropped into mainstream culture like a ton of bricks with the release of Tinder. Out of nowhere and without warning, our dating lives changed forever.
At it’s core, the reason dating apps are popular is because it gives us access to a wider variety potential dates that we otherwise wouldn’t have the chance to meet.
This is the core function of a dating app; everything else is just window dressing. Because of this core component dating apps are never going away.
They will, however, adapt and evolve.
These are my 5 predictions for the future of dating apps
1. Dating through Virtual Reality
It will become commonplace to do first dates in a 3D, virtual space, wearing a VR headset from the safety of our bedrooms.
You will choose your environment. Some will choose a simple cafe, bar or restaurant. Others will choose to date watching the sun rise on top of a mountain, sitting by a river or at the beach. And the eccentric among us will choose to have their first dates in an anime-style fantasy world or inside Hogwarts.
Those interested in BDSM may decide to have their first date inside a BDSM dungeon.
It will become the norm to have first dates inside a VR space instead of inside reality. How do I know this? Because it makes perfect sense.
Meeting a stranger inside a VR space is safer than meeting them in reality. There is no risk of sexual assault, so women will be more comfortable meeting men they don’t know and will likely agree to more dates this way.
It also requires a lot less effort. Instead of getting dressed up, putting on your make-up and travelling across the city to a bar somewhere, you’ll be able to do the entire date from your bedroom in your underpants.
First dates can often be disappointing, and it can sometimes feel like a waste of time and money. But with VR dating you won’t have to pay for drinks at a bar, or food at a restaurant, and women will be able to simply log off if a man makes an offensive or creepy comment during the date.
2. AI Matchmakers
AI is becoming more and more sophisticated as the years go by, and we’re constantly surprised by how fast and how powerful it gets.
In the future, when you sign up to a dating app, the in-built AI matchmaker will ask you a series of questions to determine your personality and interests.
It will use information such as: which profiles you look at the longest, how quickly you respond to certain messages, whether you initiate chats and the content of your chats to better choose a suitable partner for you.
If you allow it access to your private data, it will search through your photos, your browser history, your private messages, what kind of content you watch online, your preferred type of pornography as well as the previous girls you’ve been in relationships with.
It will use all this data to match you with partners that you have the highest chance of getting along with. These algorithms will be tested, retested and retested again. The AI will be learn by itself, becoming more and more sophisticated the more data it receives.
Eventually, it will become incredibly successful in pairing couples together. So much so, that we will become shocked that we ever approached dating by swiping profiles and picking somebody just based on their photos. Or even more primitive, by approaching random people in public. Imagine that!
However, there may be one impediment to AI matchmakers: Online Dating Apps have no incentive to find you the perfect partner. Instead, they more people who stay single and return to their app, the more profit they make.
After all, if somebody finds their perfect partner, they will have no more need for the app, and they will lose a customer. So dating app companies may purposefully reduce the effectiveness of the AI matchmaker in order to keep customers coming back to the app.
3. Reviews & Ratings
You know when you take an Uber and you rate the driver 5 stars? You know when you stay at an Airbnb and you rate each aspect of the apartment you stayed in.
Yeah, soon you’ll likely be rating humans.
On each online dating profile, you’ll see reviews and feedback from other previous dates this individual has been on.
One review might read: “Had a great time with Mark tonight! He’s hilarious and actually really creative! Unfortunately, I’ll be moving to a new city soon, but trust me ladies, don’t pass on Mark!”
Another review might read: “Stay away! After we arrived, he weirdly insisted on buying for my drink. Like, hello! I have my own money thankyou very much… Overall creepy guy, avoid like the plague”
While some will find ratings like these dehumanising, others will enjoy being able to check the reviews of others before going on a date.
Ghosting will become less common, as doing so will cause your rating to drop.
Men won’t be able to use the app to sleep with women and never speak to them again, as these women will leave negative reviews below their profile.
Women won’t be able to lead men on and use them for a free meal, as men will be warned beforehand by the reviews under their profile.
And of course, sexual assault will be greatly reduced by a rating system like this.
The downside of all this, of course, is that people will feel under a lot of pressure to act in a particular way on their dates. They will feel forced to put on a polite front and less able to be their authentic selves.
But for many, women in particular, they will feel the trade-off is worth it if it means they don’t have to worry about being sexually assaulted.
4. Customise Your Date
On many dating apps, you can filter your matches by criteria like height, weight, income level, whether they’re a smoker, drinker, do drugs and so on.
The dating apps of the future will go further.
You’ll be able to filter your matches right down to the most minute details. By occupation, eye colour, by the attractiveness level of the bone structure of their face (after the face has been analysed and rated by an AI program), by their style of beard or by whether they have cheek dimples or not.
You may be able to simply upload a photo of your ideal man/woman, and a program will use facial recognition software to scan the photo and find other people who look similar to that photograph.
If you feel like going on a date who looks like Prince Harry on one particular evening, you’ll be able to simply upload a photo of him and find all the men in your city who have ginger hair, a ginger beard and blue eyes.
When you have such a high number of people living in one area, like New York (Population 8 million), you have a big enough sample size whereby you can essentially customise your date as you like.
The richest and most attractive men in the world will be able filter down the exact type of woman they want, and match only with those particular women.
5. Less Photos. More Videos
We will soon see our current dating apps as a very primitive technology indeed. Right now, we swipe through still images of photos, read a little bit of text about them, and then make our decision whether to match or not.
In the future, it will be far more common for users to advertise themselves on dating apps using videos.
Some may choose to film a “day in the life” episode of them going about their business, to give romantic partners and insight into their lives.
Others will create well edited “trailers” to advertise themselves as a dating prospect, and men will be judged on the quality of their trailers. (After all, a well-produced trailer will be a sign of a high-status and wealthy man).
The more humble among us may stick with a simple Vlog style video as they talk about themselves to the camera.
The fact is, online dating is about advertising yourself as a dating prospect, and videos are simply more impressive and eye-catching than simple photos are.
For this reason, those who advertise themselves using video will have an advantage against those who don’t; eventually causing videos to become the norm.
These are my current 5 predictions for the future of online dating. Let’s see if I’m right, shall we…
