Prior to meeting her fiancé, University of Wisconsin senior Jenna Wroblewski had her fair share of failed Tinder matches.

1. How Many College Students Use Hook Up Apps In Business
2. How Many College Students Use Hook Up Apps Today
3. How Many College Students Use Hook Up Apps Per
4. How Many College Students Use Dating Apps
5. What Dating Apps Are College Students Using

These apps make dating in college convenient, and hence many college students are interested in these online platforms. Recent years have made college dating apps a new trend. Students love the variety these college dating apps provide. You can find partners, friends, and casual relationships from a single app.

1. Jun 03, 2020 The popularity of applications, sites, dating platforms in the world is growing every day. There are many hookup apps for college students and available online now. Here are listed some of the well–known colleges hookup apps that most teenagers usually use. So let’s take a look at the top 10 best college hookup apps. The 10 Best College.
2. The popularity of applications, sites, dating platforms in the world is growing every day. There are many hookup apps for college students and available online now. Here are listed some of the well–known colleges hookup apps that most teenagers usually use. So let’s take a look at the top 10 best college hookup apps. The 10 Best College.
3. Mar 04, 2016 More than half of college students in a recent survey said they were using Tinder and other dating apps (but mostly Tinder) to find friends, not hookups. Only 20 percent of the 200 students surveyed by campus jobs start-up WayUp said they used the app for casual sex, and less than a third said they were looking for a significant other.

Dating app users often find the platforms can function as either a means to solely hook up, or an opportunity to form a relationship.

Two summers ago, Wroblewski found her long-term relationship on Tinder in Norway and said, “rare is an understatement” to describe the successful match.

“My relationship, begrudgingly thanks to Tinder, is more than I could have ever anticipated,” Wroblewski said. “I’m so happy that things have turned out the way they have, based on Tinder’s reputation as a strictly hook-up app.”

While Wroblewski acknowledged the stigma attached to Tinder relationships, new UW research suggests she is not alone in her success.

Catalina Toma, UW assistant professor of communication science, has studied and surveyed dating app users as a mass group. Through her forthcoming study, “There are plenty of fish in the sea: Effects of choice overload and reversibility on online daters’ satisfaction with selected partners,”Toma revealed approximately one third of recent long-term relationships emerged from online interactions.

Despite user misconceptions, dating apps make up “a billion dollar industry,” Toma said.

Match Group, the parent company of OKCupid, Match.com and Tinder, had a 2015 revenue of more than $1 billion.

Thanks to college students

As a part of the most popular demographic using dating apps, college students both contribute to and benefit from the success of the online platforms, Toma said.

“It makes sense if you think about it,” Toma said. “Online dating is helpful for people who have a difficult time finding potential partners in everyday life. Perhaps you are really busy professionally, or you have moved into a new atmosphere, like college, and don’t know anyone.”

Tinder, for example, has more than 50 million users worldwide. The app built its large user base through initially marketing to college students, reaching half a million users in six months.

The notion of dating apps as a means to solely hook up is one idea Toma, and users like Wroblewski, have turned on its head. In Toma’s study, she found that meeting a long-term partner via dating apps or websites is not all that uncommon. Toma said her study demonstrated that dating apps are one of the most common ways to meet a long-term partner, second only to meeting through friends.

Between 2005 and 2012, 35 percent of long-term relationships originated from an online meeting. Fifty percent of those relationships started through dating apps or websites, according to Toma’s study.

Relationship between technology and healthy dating

As the number of online outlets to meet potential partners grows, UW is also working to address a new set of problems they may pose to healthy relationship development.

University Health Services originally stressed the importance of healthy dating in the Tonight program, a sexual violence awareness program for first-year and transfer students, Carmen Noveldt, assistant director of End Violence on Campus, said.

While the Tonight program will be phased out by fall 2017, an updated program will replace it.

How Many College Students Use Hook Up Apps In Business

Noveldt said UHSfound it necessary to incorporate separate workshops for dating and the promotion of safe and consensual sex. Dubbed DatingWIse and SexWIse, the in-person workshops encourage students to reflect on their personal lives and what it means to engage in a healthy college relationship.

DatingWIse encourages college students to reflect on who they want to date and what they want to get out of a relationship, Noveldt said. It helps students assess their needs and how to disagree with a partner in a healthy manner, she said.

“It empowers students to really think through who they want to date,” Noveldt said. “Long term and short term, what are their deal breakers? Who are they as people and who do they want to date as people? It bolsters their ability to be validated, that they’re worthy of the respect, but also helps them explore who they are.”

While some students prefer to seek relationships in person, many are resorting to a slew of dating apps.

Marissa Haegele/The Badger Herald

Toma and colleague Mina Choi published a study earlier this year, entitled “Mobile Media Matters”, which identifies whether dating apps can enable healthy relationship formation. The study showed that relying on technology to manage relationships was not only beneficial to couples pursuing long-distance relationships, but also to those who reside close to each other and have consistent, in-person contact.

The study showed dating partners who used mobile media reported high communication levels, a first step toward a healthy relationship, Noveldt said.

Still, a negative psychological effect of dating apps is their presentation of an unlimited array of options, which causes people to frequently think there might be somebody better. This mentality could be detrimental to being happy with one’s partner, Toma said.

Toma’s “There are plenty of fish in the sea” study results showed that participants who were presented with six different options as opposed to 24 were more satisfied with their final choice.

Discrimination through dating apps

Despite dating apps’ success in fostering long-term relationships, the platform has its share of drawbacks — particularly for women.

While using Tinder proved ultimately successful for Wroblewski, she took issue with how men had interacted with her. She averted hookups and went on a couple of dates, but, prior to meeting her fiance, her experience was “lackluster.”

“I quickly grew tired of sifting through a slew of bad pick-up lines and blatant sexism,” Wroblewski said. “I did once change my profile pictures to miscellaneous coffee cups and posed as a cup — and was incessantly objectified.”

Sexism and objectification of women have deterred many of them from dating app platforms, perhaps playing into the general misconception that they primarily serve as a place to find hookups, Wroblewski said.

Tinder has granted heterosexual users a fast and convenient means of connecting, but Tinder’s CEO Sean Rad has said they are working on a more positive user experience for members of the LGBTQ+ community. Other apps like Grindr are specifically tailored to gay, bisexual and queer men.

UW junior Jack Larson’s experiences with both Tinder and Grindr have been primarily negative, he said, criticizing the hook-up culture he witnessed, though he was successful in finding a few short-term relationships and friendships. Larson, however, said the availability of dating apps in general is a positive aspect, particularly for the LGBTQ+ community.

“They are good to have available,” Larson said. “Especially for the LGBTQ community, who may find it harder to meet people the more traditional way.”

Crafting the perfect online profile

Dating apps can lead to long-term, fulfilling relationships, but their format can perpetuate stereotypical thinking and other detrimental mindsets. This can be an issue in a relationship later on and lead to unrealistic and heightened expectations for a partner, Toma said.

She said dating apps like Tinder provide a limited amount of information, primarily focused on visual presentation through photographs and a brief biography. With the feature of swiping left or right, Tinder users make fast, split-second decisions based on immediate physical attraction.

Not only does the app highlight physical attractiveness but social status, two important but superficial factors taken into consideration when deciding who to date, Toma said.

Giving users the option to list their occupation and school reflects an opportunity to showcase social status. This can be problematic, however, and lead to what Toma called “idealization,” in which one person mentally fills in the blanks with information fitting an existing stereotype. This can be precarious for dating, prompting imagined qualities of a prospective partner that may not be correct.

“The hallmark of this idealization loop is that it makes online interactants experience greater social and/or romantic attraction toward their partners than they would have experienced had the interaction taken place face-to-face,” Toma said.

Dating apps increase communication

Though dating apps aren’t for everyone, the numbers don’t lie.

Contrary to popular belief, 80 percent of Tinder users aren’t looking for a one night stand or a hookup, but rather for a relationship, Toma said.

Dating apps don’t necessarily lead people to behave one way or another. Instead, they simply facilitate dating and dating related “desires,” Toma said. For college students desiring a healthy relationship in particular, these dating apps could be the beginning of effective mobile communication.

“Interpersonal media has become an inextricable part of relational management,” Toma said in her study, “Mobile Media Matters.” “The use of these media is associated with meaningful psychological experiences.”

Swipe right for friendship? If a newly published survey of 200 students is to be believed, more college kids use Tinder and other dating apps to find friendship than to find romance or casual sex. WayUp, a startup for college jobs, recently conducted a survey to gather statistics on the dating habits of college students and discovered this surprising trend: Fifty-eight percent of the respondents said that they had never used apps to go on actual dates, and 53 percent said that their intent on the chosen app was finding new friends. And while over half of the surveyed students claimed a lack of interest in dating through apps, only 27 percent reported using apps to find a significant other. The smallest number of people, only 20 percent, reported using Tinder to look for a hookup — which is an outcome that we typically assume most Tinder uses relate to. Additionally, the survey found that 73 percent of respondents listed Tinder as their favorite dating app, followed by Bumble at a much lower 13 percent, and OkCupid at 10 percent.

Some researchers and college students find flaws in the survey methods and doubt the honesty of the survey respondents. Sydney Mastandrea, a sophomore at University of Miami, told CNN Money, 'I think people use [Tinder] for random hookups rather than [finding] friends — but say it's for 'friends' so they aren't judged.' Aditi Paul, a Ph.D. candidate researching online dating at Michigan State University, questions those who claim to only use dating apps to form friendships. Paul argued to Inside Higher Ed that, in her opinion, college students' frequent social interactions with such an incredible number of peers eliminates any need for an app that assists with friendship.

In 2014, Justin McLeod, the founder of dating app, Hinge, told Elle, 'Finding friends online is something I'm sure some people could benefit from (especially if they've just moved to a new city), but I don't think it will ever be as big as dating... Friendships are simply forged more regularly and with less pressure and exclusivity. People tend to make and keep multiple friends, so there just isn't the same urgency.'

Inside Higher Ed also points out that universities constantly release conflicting research about online dating, with some stating dating apps are the future, and others arguing that dating apps will destroy us all. We should probably interpret all of these surveys with a grain of salt, and not assume that dating app research findings can be black and white.

What do other experts have to say about Tinder being mostly used for friendship?

1. Less Defined Relationships May Encourage The Search For Tinder Friendships

Kathleen Bogle, professor and author of Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus, told Inside Higher Ed that the use of dating apps on crowded college campuses in the first place demonstrates that '[students] are not finding what they want on their own campuses, where they are surrounded by so many other singles who are so similar to themselves.' That, she argues, is an interesting research topic in itself. Further more, Bogle argues that frequent unlabeled romantic interactions, which are very common among this demographic, may encourage students to use Tinder for 'friendship' since they can't really be sure what they are getting out of the connection, anyway. Bogle said:

How Many College Students Use Hook Up Apps Today

Many college students are not very clear what they want in terms of sexual or romantic relationships. That is part of the reason the vague concept of hooking up has flourished on college campuses. ... A hookup can be a one-night stand or the beginning of seeing each other or the start of a committed romantic relationship. It can also be anything from kissing to intercourse on the sexual spectrum. My guess is that when college students use Tinder, they don't know exactly what they want — or what they'll find. So, they may say on surveys that they are open to many different possibilities, including just making some new friends (who they may or may not actually hook up with).

2. There Is A 'Stigma' Toward Labeling These Interactions

Bogle continued that the respondents are not dishonest, but uncomfortable labeling their actions as anything beyond casual friendship. She blamed this on the dating perspectives of their peers and the fact that their age range does not prioritize long-term relationships. While college students may not truly join Tinder only to find friends, they are open to any kind of connection that forms — be it romantic or friendly. Bogle told Inside Higher Ed, “Although many students are in romantic relationships, they treat that outcome like an accident, not something they searched for and found... I don’t know that I believe that people are just trying to make friends via Tinder and have no other intentions beyond that … I think that’s just a sign of being open to whatever happens, happens.”

How Many College Students Use Hook Up Apps Per

3. Tinder Doesn't Care What People Do With The App

Tinder has stated that the college age demographic, 18-24 year olds, makes up 50 percent of the app's users. From a business standpoint, it doesn't matter how that large chunk of users implements the app into their lives as long as they are swiping. Additionally, from a relationship standpoint, Tinder does not advertise itself as a solely romantic or casual sex app. In 2014, the vice president of communications at Tinder, Rosette Pambakian, told Elle, 'The purpose was never just for dating, it was for social discovery in general ... The co-founders wanted to create a really efficient way to meet people around you who you probably would have never met before.'

4. There's A New App To Help Women Find Female Friendships

Beyond this survey and its findings about Tinder and friendship, there is a new app specifically meant to help women find new BFFs. It is called Hey! VINA and it had its first launch on January 26. The app, founded by two women, 'aims to solve the challenge of making new friends as adult women with a Tinder-style UX and a proprietary matching algorithm to suggest potential new friends based on mutual friends, proximity, and quiz data.” The app's mission, according to the founders, is eliminating competition among women by creating a larger community and network of potential friends.

How Many College Students Use Dating Apps

Want more of Bustle's Sex and Relationships coverage? Check out our new podcast, I Want It That Way, which delves into the difficult and downright dirty parts of a relationship, and find more on our Soundcloud page.

What Dating Apps Are College Students Using

Images: Andrew Zaeh/Bustle;Giphy (4)