Quarantinder How Gen Z Is Dating During Quarantine Globally

There’s a large, important, cultural shift happening - one we’ve seen for a while in Gen Z, but it’s now expanding because of COVID-19. The pandemic has accelerated a generational shift in the way we date and meet new people, and we’ve learned that connection is enduring, and despite social distancing, Gen-Z will find a way to sustain it.  

Here’s everything that happened on Tinder in the last few months. 

COVID got us to open up. 

The combination of being stuck at home and the fact that we were all going through the same thing at the same time led folks on Tinder to get chattier than ever. Globally, April 5th was the peak of this chattiness: on that day Tinder members sent an average of 52% more messages vs. the start of lockdowns in early March. 

In India, May 3rd was the peak of this chattiness: on that day Tinder members sent an average of 60% more messages vs. the start of lockdowns in early March - above the global average. 

“2020 made me realise”

To help users better introduce themselves to potential matches, Tinder recently released Prompts, a new in-app feature that lets members respond to questions or finish a sentence to display on their profile. Of all available Prompts, ‘2020 MADE ME REALISE’ had the highest adoption, signaling how much our daily lives have changed from every perspective--including how we gauge compatibility with potential matches on Tinder.

Quarantine led to creative hacks for hanging out. Social distancing turned us into creative digital daters. Forced to stay home, browsing Tinder became a way to socialize. At its peak, swipe volume* among members in India was up 32%. And with most places closed, many on Tinder looked to Animal Crossing to rendezvous. Early quarantine saw a 5x increase in Animal Crossing mentions in bios. 

Masks became the talk of Tinder. The early days of quarantine saw an uptick in mentions of toilet paper and hand sanitizer stockpiles within member bios, but come April there was only one accessory on everyone’s minds: face masks.  Members touted their own mask-wearing habits (show me your mask and I’ll show you mine”’) or looked for shared mask POV, (‘if you don’t wear a mask while grocery shopping, we’re not compatible’). 

While dating and socializing out of quarantine looks different around the world right now, hanging out on Tinder is showing no signs of letting up. 

Methodology

Data was pulled from March through May 2020

The information included in this campaign represents overall Tinder trends, not the personal information of any specific, identified individual or member. App activity, messaging, and biodata are representative of global Tinder activity between March and May 2020. When analysis references ‘at the peak of quarantine’, this refers to the highest point of a metric measured during the March-May 2020 period.

*Swipe volume/swipe activity defined as when a member swipes left or right on a profile.

Ex-lovers most popular online search on the Net

Most people look for their long lost love on the internet, a new survey has found.

The study found that one out of four people are using social networking sites like Facebook to search a childhood sweetheart.

Search engine Ask Jeeves claims that 9% even confessed trying to know details of a one-night stand.

Nearly 37% said that they wanted to learn about their ex to just “see what they were doing these days”, reports the British tabloid the Sun.

Surprisingly, 4% even looked for former flames just to inform them how happy they were without them, while 3% searched to find out how miserable their ex were.

Apart from searching for previous lovers the poll also suggested that a trend of “vanity searching”, which means looking for yourself on the net, has become increasingly popular.

Agencies

US teens high on online sex

One in five US teens has sent nude or partially clothed images of themselves to someone by e-mail or mobile phone and twice as many have sent sexually suggestive electronic messages, a poll has showed.

And American youngsters aged 13-19 are having tech-sex despite a majority of them saying it could have "serious negative consequences" on them, the survey commissioned by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy (NCTUP) showed.

More than half of the 1,280 teens and young adults up to age 26 who took part in the online poll, conducted in September and October, said they had received a sexually suggestive message from someone else -- and one in five said they had shared the racy message with a third person.

Eight in 10 teens said they would be concerned about sending a sexy image of themselves or racy message because they "might regret it later," while nearly 70 per cent said they were worried it could "disappoint family."

Where teen tech-sex gives real rise to concern among adults, said NCTUP, is that more than one-third of teens (38 per cent) say exchanging sexy content makes dating or physical sex with others more likely, and three in 10 say those who exchange sexually suggestive content are "expected to hook up."

"That so many young people say technology is encouraging an even more casual, hook-up culture is reason for concern, given the high rates of teen and unplanned pregnancy in the United States," said Marisa Nightingale, senior advisor to NCTUP.

Although teen pregnancy and birth rates in the United States have dropped by one-third since the 1990s, they remain high compared to other developed countries and carry high costs to the teens involved, their children and society, NCPTUP said in a report published last year.

Source: Agencies