Why are dating apps more widely used than friendship apps?
The goal of my study was to uncover why dating apps are so much more widely used than friendship apps. In fact, dating apps have approximately 25 times more users than friendship apps.
This topic is important because adults have become significantly lonelier over the last four decades. Additionally, adults in the Millenial and Gen Z generations (18-39 years old) are the loneliest. Further, loneliness is harmful to physical and mental health and diminishes overall well-being. However, friendship offers support that buffers against the negative effects of loneliness.
I believe that friendship apps have the potential to help people build long-lasting, sincere connections and feel happier and healthier as a result. So, I chose to study friendship app usage in adults 18-39 years old because younger adults are the loneliest and the most technologically savvy. Thus, I believe that they are the population most likely to benefit from using friendship apps.
I hope that my research begins filling the gaps in the scant friendship app literature. Ultimately, I want this research to reach friendship app companies so that they may adopt new marketing strategies and app features that will encourage more lonely young adults to sign up and meet friends.
From my data, I learned that the two most significant reasons that people use friendship apps significantly less than dating apps are because friendship apps are more stigmatized and are not well-known. Future research should investigate why there is more stigma surrounding friendship apps than dating apps and how dating apps became significantly less stigmatized.
Comments
Hi Madison! I love social…
Hi Madison!
I love social media research and this is an important question that you've addressed. Upon reflection, I don't think I can name a single "friendship" app, while I can name numerous dating apps, so clearly lack of awareness is a problem. I can definitely imagine that it would feel a little "pathetic" to some people to turn to an app to try to make friends, while dating app usage is pretty ubiquitous and highly accepted by people under 35 at this point. I'm not surprised that you found trends in the data that people who use friendship apps are, on average, a bit more lonely and depressed than those who don't. Presumably that's why they're turning to the apps. If you plan to pursue this work further, I would recommend that you use a different measure of depression. The PHQ is a very flawed measure of depression, because it asks about frequency of symptoms rather than severity of symptoms. As a result, it's just not sensitive enough to differences in depressive symptoms, especially in normative samples. Something like the Beck Depression Inventory would be a better choice.
Thanks for tackling such a great topic!
Cheers,
Dr. Melissa Hunt
Hi Madison This is really…
Hi Madison
This is really interesting and you've done a great job! Why are people more embarrassed about using friendship apps than dating apps? Are they "losers" if they want more friends but not if they want to date people? And are friendship apps actually dating apps in disguise? What would you do to get more people to use them? What kinds of appeals would work? And how might they differ from dating app appeals? I think they sound like a great idea!
Thanks!
Best wishes,
Barb Mellers