Dating app fatigue: why more choice does not make choosing easier

Sunday evening. You are on the sofa with your phone in your hand, thumb going left, left, right, left. After twenty minutes you no longer know who you have actually seen. Three new matches, two conversations that stalled at “How are you?”, and one date cancelled an hour before you were due to meet. You close the app with a feeling that is hard to name: not exactly sad, not exactly angry, just somehow emptied out. “I’ve deleted it three times this year,” someone says. “And downloaded it again three times.”

If you recognise yourself here, you are not an exception and there is nothing wrong with you. In this post I would like to explain where this particular tiredness comes from, what research does and does not tell us about it, and how you can use the apps in a way that takes less out of you. I am not going to persuade you to delete them, or to keep going. Nor will I claim that a relationship is a goal you have to reach. Those decisions are yours.

What dating app fatigue actually is

First, a clarification: this is not a diagnosis, and it is not a technical term with a precise definition. It is an everyday name for a cluster of feelings people describe after using the apps for a while: exhaustion, cynicism (“they’re all the same”), a sense that looking for someone has turned into another job, and less and less pleasure in a new match. The description resembles burnout, except that it does not happen in the office but in your pocket.

That we talk about it at all reflects how much the way people meet has changed. The sociologist Michael Rosenfeld and his colleagues found, in a United States sample, that among heterosexual couples who met in 2017, roughly 39 per cent met online — more than through friends, which had been the most common route for decades. The figure is American and covers the internet as a whole rather than apps alone, but the direction is clear: what used to be a marginal option has become one of the main ones. I do not know of comparable research for Slovenia, so I will not guess at a number.

When something becomes the main route, it also becomes a source of pressure. If that is where people meet, it seems you have to be there too. And if it is not going well for you there, the thought that the problem must be you creeps in quickly.

The paradox of choice: jam and people

The most common explanation for the fatigue is too much choice. It goes back to a well-known experiment by the psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper, published in 2000. They set up a jam stall in a shop: once with 24 flavours, once with six. The larger display drew more passers-by, but only a small share of those who stopped went on to buy; with the smaller display, roughly one in three did. The psychologist Barry Schwartz built on this and similar findings to develop the idea of the paradox of choice: more options can paralyse us and leave us less satisfied with what we pick.

The idea is appealing and easy to transfer to apps. But it is only fair to add what popular writing tends to leave out. When Benjamin Scheibehenne and his colleagues reviewed fifty experiments on choice overload in 2010, the average effect was close to zero. In some experiments more choice did harm, in others it helped, and in many it changed nothing. Choice overload, then, is not a law of nature. It shows up under particular conditions — above all when options are hard to compare, when you have no clear criteria and when you are under time pressure.

And that describes browsing profiles rather well. People are not jam: they differ not on one quality but on a hundred, and the ones that matter most for a relationship are not in the photograph. If you often get stuck over bigger decisions, you may also find something familiar in the post Decision paralysis: when thinking it over becomes a way of avoiding.

It matters that these three mechanisms are not the same thing. One person is worn down mainly by deciding, another by silence, a third by the feeling of being on display. What helps depends on which of them is loudest for you.

When the eye learns to reject

A study by Tila Pronk and Jaap Denissen from 2020 is especially relevant to apps. Participants looked at profiles of potential partners one after another and decided, for each, whether they liked the person. The further they went through the sequence, the less likely they were to say yes to anyone. The authors called this a rejection mind-set: faced with a long run of options, we become increasingly picky, less satisfied with what we see and more pessimistic about our own chances.

I find this one of the most useful findings, because it turns the usual explanation around. It is not necessarily that “there’s nobody normal out there”. It may be that the fiftieth profile was perfectly fine, but by then your eye was already set to look for reasons against. The study was run under controlled conditions and with fairly short sequences, so it should not be inflated. But the direction fits what people describe: after half an hour of swiping, nobody seems interesting any more.

Eli Finkel and his colleagues, in an extensive review of online dating, pointed to something similar back in 2012. When we look at people side by side as an offer, we begin to assess them by qualities that can be compared quickly — height, education, a photograph. Yet those qualities are poor predictors of how we will feel with someone once we are sitting opposite them. The same review was also cautious about promises that algorithms can predict compatibility.

Rejections in a row

The second mechanism is less about thinking and more about the body. In ordinary life you experience romantic rejection a few times a year, perhaps less. On an app you can experience ten in a week: a like with no response, a conversation that goes quiet mid-sentence, a date after which no message comes. Each one is small. But the nervous system does not add them up by importance; it adds them up by number.

The psychologist Kipling Williams, who has studied exclusion for decades, has shown that even a brief and seemingly trivial experience of being ignored wears away at four basic needs: to belong, to hold yourself in esteem, to have some control and to feel that your existence registers with someone. In his experiments people were hurt even when a stranger left them out of a simple computer ball-tossing game. Silence on a screen, then, is more to the body than “nothing happened”.

A further difficulty is that these rejections are mostly ambiguous. You do not know whether someone turned you down, simply stopped opening the app, or met somebody else. Ambiguity is fuel for brooding. Why silence often hurts more than a clear “no” is the subject of the post Ghosting: why silence hurts more than rejection. And if you know that rejection hits you harder and for longer than it does other people, have a look at Rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD): the sensitivity we rarely name.

The result of a run of small rejections is often self-protection. You start writing less, expecting less, trying less. That is understandable, but it has a cost: conversations become shallow, shallow conversations fade, and you get confirmation that it is not worth the effort. The circle closes.

When you become a profile

The third mechanism has to do with the fact that on an app you are not only the one who chooses. You are also a choice. You have to assemble a version of yourself that will be interesting enough in two seconds, and then watch how strangers respond to it. It is hard for those numbers not to start meaning something.

In 2017 Jessica Strubel and Trent Petrie compared students who used Tinder with those who did not. Users reported less satisfaction with their face and body and more comparison with others. Caution is needed here: the study captured a single moment, so we do not know whether the app erodes self-image or whether people with a more fragile self-image are more likely to use it. Probably some of each is true.

What I can say with more confidence is this: when you measure your worth by the response of people who do not know you, you are using a very poor measure. I have written about how comparison works in Comparing yourself on social media: what constant measuring does to the brain, and about the difference between how you see yourself and how much you value yourself in Self-image, self-worth, self-confidence: how they differ and how each is built.

Why it is so hard to put down

If the app tires you, why do you keep opening it? Part of the answer lies in how the reward arrives. Most swipes bring nothing, and then suddenly there is a match or a message. The psychology of learning has known for decades that unpredictable rewards sustain a behaviour more stubbornly than regular ones: because you do not know when the next one will come, you try once more. Dopamine plays a part here, and it is less a chemical of pleasure than a chemical of anticipation — it drives you to seek, not to feel satisfied.

The other part of the answer is more human. We often open the app when we are lonely, bored or unsure of ourselves, and at those times we are not necessarily looking for a person but for relief. A match provides it for a moment. That is why you can find yourself swiping even though you do not really want to meet anyone. I have written more broadly about when reaching for the phone is a habit and when it is a problem in Phone and screen addiction: habit or problem?.

A conversation between two friends might go something like this (composed, not a real person):

“I’ve deleted it again. Properly this time.”
“What happened this time?”
“Nothing special. That’s exactly it. We’d been messaging for two weeks, everything was fine, then he just went quiet. And I realised it doesn’t even surprise me any more.”
“Did it hurt?”
“I don’t know. I think I’m more worried that it didn’t. As if I’ve stopped expecting anything.”
“When did you last open it when you were in a good mood?”
“… Never, I think. I always open it when I’m bored or home alone.”

That last sentence is often the key. An app is not a neutral tool that you use in the same way at any hour. The state you are in when you open it affects whom you notice, how you write and how you read a silence.

How to use the apps with less harm

None of what follows has been studied as a “treatment” for dating app fatigue — as far as I know, no such research exists yet. These are, however, sensible inferences from what we know about decision-making, rejection and habits.

• Limit the run. If the eye learns to reject over a long sequence, a short one is better than a long one. Fifteen profiles you actually read rather than a hundred you skim.
• Choose your moment. Not in bed, not after a bad day, not after two glasses of wine. At those times you are looking for comfort, not for a person.
• Fewer conversations at once. Two or three in which you are genuinely present give you more than ten in which you repeat the same sentences.
• Meet in person soon. Weeks of messaging build an image that a meeting can hardly live up to. A short coffee within a week or two tells you more — and in any case sooner.
• Turn off notifications. Do not let the app summon you. Open it yourself, when you decide to.
• Keep other routes open. A class, a club, friends of friends. Not because they are “more authentic”, but because a single route carries too much weight.

None of this guarantees that you will meet someone. It only ensures that looking costs you less — and that is the one part you really can influence.

An exercise: seven days on purpose

If you want to find out whether it is the app itself that tires you or the way you use it, try doing things differently for a week. You can start today.

1. Write down why you are there. One sentence, on paper: “I’m on here because …” Be honest. “Because I’d like to meet someone for something serious”, “because I’m bored” and “because I’m afraid I’ll end up alone otherwise” are three very different reasons. If you are not sure what matters to you in a person, the personal values list can help.
2. Set a window. Pick a time of day when you are usually all right, and set a timer for twenty minutes. Outside that window you do not open the app; switch off notifications.
3. Check your state before opening. One word: how am I right now? If the answer is “lonely”, “tired” or “angry”, skip today and ring someone who knows you instead.
4. Read before you swipe. Stop at each profile long enough to read the description. When you notice you are only skimming, finish, even if the timer has not gone off.
5. Write one line after closing. How am I now compared with before: better, the same, worse? After seven days, read all seven lines. The pattern will tell you more than any advice.

If most of the lines after seven days say “worse”, that is useful information, not a defeat. A break is an entirely legitimate decision — for a month, for six months or for longer.

Where this explanation falls short

So far I have written as though apps were mainly a source of fatigue. That is only part of the picture, and it is fair to give the other part.

They have brought many people something good. Rosenfeld’s data, which I mentioned at the start, also mean that a great many couples met online. Finkel and his colleagues singled out access as the main advantage: to people you would otherwise never have come across. That matters especially for those with few options around them — people after a divorce whose circle is all couples, gay and lesbian people in smaller towns, those who work shifts or have just moved.

The evidence of harm is weaker than it sounds. Most studies capture a single moment and cannot separate cause from effect, a large share were carried out on students, and the apps change faster than the research is published. Anyone who claims that apps are “destroying love” is saying more than the data allow. The same goes for anyone who claims they are entirely harmless.

Sometimes the tiredness is not from the app. If you have no energy elsewhere either, if you are sleeping badly, if nothing gives you pleasure any more, the app may simply be the place where it shows most. Then the answer lies elsewhere — including with your GP, if it goes on for several weeks. And sometimes behind the fatigue is a question the app cannot settle: do I want a relationship at all, or am I looking for one because it is expected? That pressure is the subject of the post Single in your thirties and beyond: a pressure that isn’t yours.

A small place has its own rules. In a small setting such as Slovenia, people often complain of the opposite problem: not too much choice, but seeing the same faces after a few weeks, colleagues and exes among them. The advice to “limit the run” is beside the point there, while the advice about the time and state in which you open the app still holds.

And a word about safety, because it belongs here: if someone you met online harasses you, threatens you or tries to blackmail you, that is not part of ordinary fatigue. In Slovenia, contact the police on 113, and in an emergency call 112.

When it is worth talking to someone

Most people sort out the fatigue themselves: with a break, with different rules, by talking to friends. Sometimes, though, the apps bring to the surface something that was already there. Always the same type of person. Always the same moment when you pull back, or the other person does. A silence that does not make you angry but flattens you, after which you turn the same thoughts over for days — what is technically called rumination. If another person’s silence quickly sends you into alarm, the post Anxious attachment: why a partner’s silence sets off the alarm may also feel familiar.

In that case the app is not the cause but a magnifying glass. And what it shows can be explored. As a therapist in training under supervision in marriage and family therapy, I work within relational family therapy, which is interested in exactly this: how present relationships — including those only just beginning — repeat something we learned about closeness much earlier. Sessions take place in person in Ljubljana, and I also work with English-speaking clients. I do not promise that you will find someone more easily afterwards. But it may become clearer what you are looking for, and what you are afraid of as you look.

What to remember

• Dating app fatigue is not a diagnosis but an understandable response to a great deal of deciding, many small rejections and the feeling of being on display.
• Abundant choice does not always do harm; the research is mixed. Long runs of profiles, however, probably make us more rejecting and more pessimistic.
• Silence on a screen is not “nothing” to the body — even tiny exclusions wear at the sense of belonging and worth.
• You have the most influence over when, how much and in what state you open the app.
• A break is not a defeat, a relationship is not an obligation, and if the same painful pattern keeps repeating around the apps, it is worth talking to someone about it.