Dangers Of Online Dating Apps And Sites

Everybody wants love. People want to feel loved, experience love and live love. Love is an intricate part of our being, it is embedded in our subconscious mind and is one of the best feelings to have and portray.

Some of us have had this feeling shown to us, with our families, friends, well-wishers, and sometimes we humans seem to have a ‘divine’ connection with our maker that we term love. Love transcends boundaries and sometimes there is a need to show a type of love more intimate than what is shown between friends and family.

This kind of intimate love is felt and there is a need to portray it to someone usually of a opposite sexes and in some cases the same sex. It still is love and usually we want this love co-existing between two partners to be a feeling that will lead on to a permanent companionship.

So this leads me to the question: is this technology bad or has it been abused ?

Technology has had an impact in the world, the way we live, and the way we do things. It’s safe to say that technology has had its impact on love too, not something that will sound feasible to the human ear but in its little way it has played its role on how we see and feel love.

Technology, through the internet has introduced dating sites that help us “find love” even from the confines of our homes. Unlike the traditional way of going out, meeting a person, talking, going for a couple dates and starting off your relationship, dating sites does a work similar to that but it doesn’t need you leaving your homes.

You just need to cling onto your phone, do a couple swipes, a couple clicks and you’re well on your way to meeting a person that might end up as a life partner.

Over time popular dating sites like Tinder and Badoo have brought random strangers together, leading them to have the best times of their lives, some of these meetings have resulted in marriages. But it has seemed that nowadays technology has created an avenue for perverts, psychopaths, scam artistes, molesters to ply their trade.

Tinder a popular dating site and is a location-based social search mobile app that allows users to like (swipe right) or dislike (swipe left) other users, and allows users to chat if both parties swiped to the right resulting in a “match”.

Tinder was founded by Sean Rad, Jonathan Badeen, and Justin Mateen (some sources credit Tinder with having more founders) and was launched in 2012. It was among the first apps that were termed “swiping apps” as users employed a swiping motion to choose photos of other users, they swiped right for a like and swiped left of a photo to move on to the next one.

Tinder has had its share of criticism but has also had its success stories as users shared stories of engagements and many weddings that have come to be because of the app. Let’s dwell on this criticism shall we? Dating apps allow you meet strangers from the confines of your homes, some of these strangers are not what they claim to be most times, and they just put up an image (pun intended) for you that depict them.

This technology can be dangerous, because in real life the person you seem to fancy on the other end of the gadget might be a psychopath, sociopath, a total misfit and much more.

Dating apps like Tinder are usually flooded with people like that who take advantage of this technology to commit social crimes. Tinder being all about making quick choices based on the appearance does not allow for users have more knowledge of the other person as what they say is taken as the truth. With this there were reported cases of cheating partners being caught (quite ironic), date rape, scams and fraudulent acts and various social vices that relate to that.

Tinder was also termed a “hookup app” as it doesn't only gamify the dating process, it also sexualizes it. It isn't any more just a way to get a date with someone, as users found it as a place to get all their lustful needs so love becomes secondary.

This has been the case too for so many other dating sites, it has been a gateway to many nefarious activities but still yet there has been success stories of users that found intimate love among themselves, this success stories however have been rare to come by.

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