A new trend of being explicit about what you are looking for from the moment of joining a dating app is taking hold thanks to Gen Z users
Many of us these days use dating apps like Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid to meet people for various purposes. It has revolutionized the dating world, but one of the www.datingranking.net/heated-affairs-review/ problems with apps is how easy it is to lie. Indeed, according to a 2018 study published in the Journal of Communication, almost two-thirds of the lies that appear in dating profiles are about the person’s appearance and/or their availability (e.g. whether they are single or in a relationship already).
Enter “hardballing:” the new trend of being explicit about what you are looking for from the moment of joining a dating app.
Gen Z on the apps
This change in dating app user discourse is attributed to Generation Z – young adults aged 18 to 25. More than half of the users of Tinder, for example, are people in this age group, many of whom joined the network while confined to their homes due to the Covid-19 pandemic, looking for contact with others even if it was only online.
These users tend to have a more honest and sincere way of relating to one another on apps, which has given way to the notion of hardballing, in which the user writes honestly about what they are looking for in a relationship, such as a temporary hook-up or a long-term relationship. This is preferably also expressed before meeting in person so as not to waste anyone’s time.
In this, Gen Z users can be distinguished from millennials (people born between 1981 and 1996, according to the Pew Research Center), who seem to prefer to “ghost” if they find they are not interested in a person. Gen Zs, by contrast, like to get straight to the point from the beginning, to avoid disappointments and false expectations. Lees verder