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Women are increasingly complaining of negative user experiences on dating apps, leading to big players in the industry — including Match Group, the dating app group behind Tinder and Hinge, as well as Bumble — to lose USD bns from their market valuations in the past three years. Match Group (valued at USD 7.8 bn) and Bumble (valued at USD 1.5 bn) have both seen their shares fall more than 80% since their peak in 2021, “wiping more than USD 40 bn and USD 18 bn from their respective values,” the Financial Times reports.
Behind the fall: Women have fallen out of love with the experience, which some users say has included everything from unsolicited explicit material and violent threats, to simply being bombarded with an imbalanced gender ratio on the apps.
Gender + age disparity makes for a big demographic gap: Of men aged between 18-34, almost half of the respondents had used dating platforms, according to a UK market poll by Mintel, a market intelligence agency. Only 25% of the women surveyed responded the same way and cited “dating app fatigue” as the reason for the breakup with the platforms.
What’s causing dating app burnout? The gender imbalance means that men have fewer chances to connect with women, leading them to more aggressively pursue the women who are on the apps. Meanwhile, women’s phones are flooded with matches, making the experience less exciting and/or rewarding for both groups. Some 50% of women on dating apps also report routinely being harassed with inappropriate content or threatening messages, making the apps feel unsafe.
Bringing back women users may not be all that straightforward: The dating platforms have tried — and thus far not been very successful — to attract women again and lead them to engage more with the apps, the FT notes. One marketing blitz from Bumble backfired for being tone-deaf and essentially shaming the women who opted out of the online dating experience. Match Group is also aware of the challenge, with CEO Bernard Kim recently referring to women and Gen Z as “the most critical demographic” for dating apps.
