About a year ago, when Rahul, a marketing professional from Chennai, first used Tinder, a mobile dating application that promises to help you date people in your locality, he could hardly find anyone in his area. “I got my first like (somebody should like your profile to go to the next step) after a month. After we connected and started chatting, I realised the other person also started using the app to give it a shot” he says. In the last one year, Rahul says, he has made about nine connections (people who like each other’s profiles get connected) and met four of them in person. “Now I get about 20 notifications every day about people around me on Tinder,” he says.
Dating apps have been catching on primarily because, unlike dating sites, they are more personal. That’s why there are more actual accounts, real men and women and they behave themselves. And when they don’t, it’s easy to end the connection right there without any great effort. And apps that don’t provide such privacy options, lose out in the league. Mahananda, who used to review apps for a national daily, says apps like Tinder have many layers of protection that help both men and women feel secure. “Tinder is one app that introduced the western concept of dating to India without distortion. It’s very safe unless you share personal details like phone number with the person you are interacting with,” she says. However, Rahul feels that though Tinder is a hookup app globally, it’s still considered a dating app in India because people here see it that way. “But it is definitely a way forward. And Tinder is used more in Mumbai and Bengaluru than in Chennai,” he adds.
Dating apps are for those who are willing to experiment and take advantage of technology. Those who are bored can always switch to some other app or simply not use them. Says actor-director Luke Kenny, “Dating apps are yet another tool that attempts to engage a generation into something. There was Orkut, there was Facebook and now these apps. Whether I would date a person through such apps is purely based on the circumstances. Even in person, people may project a false image. So what matters the most is how you handle the situation,” he says. However, Mumbai-based psychologist Dr Kiran Shandilya says a virtual relationship will never replace a real-life relationship. “Technology is just a medium. As long as people don’t take such things seriously, it’s for their good,” she concludes.
