0:00 Is there a part of you like curious about what it would have been like to be single and in the dating market over the past six years. I'm kind of curious, but at the same time, it just looks like a heaping pile of garbage that's been lit on fire. 0:16 Modern dating, it's a bit of a trash fire, at least according to my girlfriend who you heard at the top. But it feels easy to take that perspective these days. If you read articles from the Huffington Post to Scientific American, they all say the same thing. Us Millennials are unhappy commitment folks, at least when compared to previous generations. Now Kayla and I have been together for just over six years, which means our relationship predates what's probably become the biggest tech development in the dating world. There's a new matchmaking app catching fire across America, Tinder. An addictive matchmaking app released in August finds out who likes you and nearby and connects you with them. If you Kayla, and I have a limited understanding of dating apps like Tinder, frankly, they kind of scare us. 1:02 I know that you have to swipe. And I know it's based off of pictures, which I think is very superficial. 1:08 So if we broke up, do you think you'd use any of them? 1:12 I don't know. Because we've been together for a while. 1:15 We've been together for a while. It'd be really weird to get back into the whole dating world. Do you feel like you kind of missed it by like being I think I totally think I missed it. I don't know how to use it at all. 1:28 And we're not the only ones. 1:30 Thank God. I have not had to deal with that. 1:35 That's my colleague at Ryerson, John Michael. He's talking about dating apps. 1:39 The the idea to me seems so strange. I have friends who use it and who talk about it. And it seems a little alienating. 1:49 John Michael's been in a long term relationship about six years, same as me. He's a little worried about the effect these apps might be having on relationship intimacy. 1:58 I don't know I maybe maybe we're maybe I'm old fashioned in this sense. But I I think that love is not something that you should play around with. carelessly. I questioned sometimes whether technology makes it more possible for people to get hurt in relationships. 2:23 It's possible that this dating app anxiety that some of us pre Tinder daters hold stems from what we hear from our single friends. Here's Kayla again. 2:32 Generally they hate Tinder. Generally, it's not like Ooh, I'm gonna go on Tinder and find somebody. It's like, Oh, God, I have to use this piece of trash. 2:39 But they feel they say they have to use what.. 2:42 They have to use it because that's where all the kids are. That's where all the kids that's where all the young hip cool kids are. 2:48 Well, I talked to some of those young hip kids. 2:52 Um, they're fun to start off with. But yeah,yeah. 2:56 This is Mark 21 year old fourth year student at McMaster University. He's talking about his apps of choice, Tinder and Bumble. Bumbles a lot like Tinder, only female users have to be the first ones to instigate a match. 3:11 Like no they got I just I'm fed up with them. By the end of it, there's just I still very much prefer to talk to people in person. 3:18 Mark avoided dating apps at first until a friend in Teachers College at Brock, 26 year old Josh got him into it. 3:24 Josh got me into it last year, because we're just hanging out at his place and just said to try it. And the fun thing that it started off with was just like, it was like a social thing, like friends would swipe with us or like we'd swipe with friends just like you have like five minutes to kill before you're going out to the bar. And you just wanted to check it it was out because it wasn't like just you isolated in your room at the end of the night, just like swiping on it in the dark, just like just like illuminated by the pale glow of your phone. 3:55 I also talked to Josh about his experiences using the apps. I've been on dating apps for about two years. I've primarily used Tinder and recently switched over to Bumble. Like with Mark, Josh is starting to feel a little disillusioned with dating apps and a little nostalgic for dating in the pre app era. 4:13 It has this positive appeals to it. That's why so many people use it. But I think just over time, what an individual is looking for changes. And that is what charges the app. I feel like dates pre dating app are much more original and creative. Like from the examples that I would do. Before dating apps. This was classic, go to the movies. So that was a good one. But then you also kind of find ways to invent your own fun. You didn't have to have a prescriptive thing now everybody defaults to Oh, let's go to whatever restaurants trendy right now and then go home and watch Netflix and whatever. Before that though. It was like, Well, I'm going to turn my car into a drive it doesn't it Yeah, I would I would take my laptop, I'd throw it on the dashboard of there and like play some DVD movies off of it and turn the car into a drive it. 5:03 Josh says he's noticed his relationships have gotten a lot shorter since dating apps came around, something he in part attributes to something called FOMO, the fear of missing out. 5:23 People don't want to settle down and commit with something that they're not 100% sure of for fear that they might miss out on like thatgreater love for that better opportunity. So that I think is preventing a lot of people from making that one step to see things through or to you know, work through the hard stuff. They want the tinsil the perfect stuff happen right away. And as soon as that doesn't happen, they get bored. Unless they get bored, they get less inclined when they are less inclined, there's less energy, there's less creativity, there's less connection. And then you're kind of balancing this constant connectivity, where you're either answering emails, Facebook, messages, text messages, snapchats. And then you throw in these dating apps and then at the end of the day, you're just like, I've wasted so much energy, just keeping on top of things, that I don't really have the energy left to enjoy things. I kind of I just, I kind of missed the days of like, before smartphones in general. 6:03 While I'm sure app dating does work for plenty of people, and if it works for you that's that's great, honestly. But from the outside For the uninitiated, dating apps do still look pretty intimidating. Which leaves us long term, folk, you know, the ones who've been in relationships older than Tinder, feeling like we'd be fish out of water if we ever found ourselves single again. So where does that leave Kaylin and I? So you're saying is we shouldn't break up? 6:28 Ah, not really. I've also got zero problem like going out getting the dog and just being the dog lady. Good dog parks. You know what, it probably needs somebody at a dog park. Before I use like, Tinder.