How online dating apps have influenced gender norms

The invention of online matchmaking was a major turning point in the dating landscape and created a noticeable shift in the traditional dating script. Over the past decade, online dating has risen in popularity and advanced in both organization and structure. Women-centered mobile applications, most notably, Bumble, appeal widely to a largely female audience. This niche mobile dating app has digitally transformed the traditional dating script by centring women’s needs with the hopes of balancing the scales of equality in a male-dominated industry. As a result, it has influenced gender identity and social behavioral changes among heterosexual men and women on the online dating platform.

But how does online dating, as a type of digital communication, influence society? And which communication concepts can help us explore this effect?

Online dating is the practice of using the internet to search for, interact, and meet up with potential romantic or sexual partners. This social networking is facilitated mainly through a dedicated website or application. Also known as virtual dating, this now popular social practice, first broke out to the public population in the mid-1990s with the launch of Match.com in 1995 (Fansher and Eckinger 2020). Soon after its premiere, other major competitors such as eHarmony launched in 2000, followed by PlentyOfFish in 2003 and OkCupid debuted in 2004.

According to the Pew Research Centre, online dating as a type of digital communication can have notable effects on individuals and on society. It can lead to online harassment, particularly of young women, and it can disrupt traditional ideas about meeting romantic partners – for better or for worse.

The founder of Bumble, Whitney Wolfe, seems cognisant of these effects and sought to mitigate them. Like Tinder, Bumble adopted the now-familiar swiping feature but with a matriarchal twist: a man can’t message a woman unless she initiates contact first. Once a match is made, the woman is given a 24-hour window to ‘make the first move,’ and once this time elapses the match disappears.

With its female-led initiative, Bumble singlehandedly flipped the dating script and changed the narrative for heterosexual online dating – thus potentially changing the effects of online dating on women and on society. In particular, Bumble sought to redefine gender norms by leveling a male-dominated industry by positioning women as the directors of their own love story.

The theory of agenda setting provides a useful account of the relationship between the media agenda and the public agenda (Miller 2005). To set the agenda means to put an issue on the table for public discussion. Bumble achieved this with its female-first transformations to online dating. In doing so, it put the idea of female-led dating on the agenda.

We can also describe framing as a type of communicational effect on society. Bumble reframed online dating (and romance in general) by focusing on women as leaders in the relationship.

It’s clear that Bumble’s initiative was influenced by the ideologies and experiences of its founder. During her tenure at Tinder, working as the marketing executive, Wolfe experienced sexual harassment and discrimination at the workplace. This resulted in her filing a lawsuit against the dating app giant in 2014. Wolfe is now dedicated to empowering women and advocating for gender equality on a global level by using Bumble as a platform to create that space for its female users. She continues to influence interpretive frameworks about mobile-based dating apps and feminism.

This case study shows that media effects is a complicated concept. Online dating apps are often the target of negative news coverage that focuses on the disruption to “traditional” types of romance. There is little media coverage of online dating as an enabler of relationships. Bumble shows that the rules around online dating can be rewritten to enable women’s participation in digitally-enhanced relationships and to paint a different picture of acceptable behaviours in a romantic partnership.

In conclusion, communication shapes meaning through various aspects of our lives, and this can directly and indirectly affect our worldviews, beliefs, ideologies, and perceptions of what we think we know. There is a plethora of facilitators and contributors to the communication process that help further in the meaning-making process of things. Digital media has changed the game by diversifying the kind of information that is out there in the world. There truly is something out there for everyone to familiarize themselves with. Through communication and media, we are able to position ourselves somewhere in society and navigate through this digital age. Newspapers, television, and radio continue to hold influential power in forming public opinion whereas social media platforms such as Bumble, Instagram, and TikTok which are user-centered, continue to take over the public sphere.