College life is full of quintessential moments — living in residence halls, eating at dining halls — and, eventually, admitting defeat in the organic search for love and downloading a dating app. 

Online dating has become increasingly normalized in a society full of smartphones and social media. Most young adults have tried a dating app at some point, choosing between myriad options from Tinder to Hinge and beginning the demoralizing ritual of swiping between potential prospects. 

It sucks.

Gone are the days of being asked out in person. There are far fewer meet-cutes and romantic love stories. The age of dating apps has taken over.

Scrolling through endless mirror pics and selfies has reduced dating to a superficial shell of what it once was — spontaneous and romantic. Since matches are mainly based on appearance, a carefully curated one at that, users miss out on crucial information in a potential match. A person’s intelligence, charm, humor, or lack thereof doesn’t truly show through a profile, no matter how many “personality pics” it has.

Different dating apps are laced with various nuances as well. Tinder equals looking for a hookup, Hinge usually means something more serious — it’s like a sexually-charged algorithm users must navigate to find someone adjacent to what they’re looking for. 

It’s not all bad. There are lots of successful stories floating around to prove it. Online dating can expand a user’s world, seemingly endless options with the swipe of a finger. For those who are naturally introverted, dating apps may just be the ideal way to meet people. But for every Hinge date that could flourish into a two-year relationship, there are a hundred creepy DMs prior.

The stigma that online dating once had has disappeared as more people head to the App Store. What was once considered a desperate way to meet someone has come to the forefront of the dating scene. For those who are hesitant, it is portrayed as a game — friends hype up dating apps as fun, casual and low-stakes. Whether to find love or judge others, dating apps reach a wide audience.

While it’s difficult enough to find someone who strikes the right balance of compatibility on both an attraction and personal level, it’s seemingly impossible online. Despite how advanced technology is, it can’t determine who you love. Love is unpredictable and often doesn’t make sense; it can’t be broken down into pseudo-compatibility methods. If we filtered the people we have interacted with in real life, there wouldn’t be so many incredible experiences, including meeting those we may not initially take to. 

Online dating prevents users from putting anything substantial on their profile and is not conducive to forming real connections like meeting someone in real life is. In turn, it’s hard to find raw emotional and physical intimacy. Despite all the filters and preferences I put on my profile, I match with a guy; we exchange two messages, and then he immediately asks me to come over that night. The movies always implied he would at least buy me dinner first.

This is obviously not a universal experience, and maybe it’s my cynicism, but finding someone who at the very least wants to take you on an actual date is rare. Attraction becomes the sole factor on which our decision to swipe right or left depends. This creates inherent expectations for sex or sexual activity, producing a prominent hookup culture under the guise of dating. 

Technology has made everything easier, and dating is no exception. We’ve become lazy; too lazy for romance, too lazy for real love. People don’t feel the same need to approach one another in person when it can be done from behind the safety of a screen. 

For a long time, it seemed as though love was what humans did best. Previous generations had to earn love, romance and sex by building connections and being vulnerable. I mourn for myself and all young adults who will never experience dating in the way most of our parents did. Attraction is now two-dimensional, diminished to a brief series of photos that fail to convey any tangible aspects of someone’s personality.

Young people on a college campus don’t need to rely on a third-party app to meet each other. A collective effort to abandon dating apps and approach one another in person can shift the depressing reality of modern dating to the random romance that never failed our predecessors. True connection lies in wait beyond our phone screens. People are out there in the real world — the proof is in the dating profile — all we have to do is meet them. 

Devyn Rudnick is a second-year journalism major. She can be reached at [email protected]