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Dating, relationships, and even hookups are undeniably difficult at Masterman. The school is small and familial. With serious classes and a myriad of activities, time for romance can be slim. This Masterman dating dilemma is only heightened by COVID-19. With students online since March, there are few social interactions.
“I think people are cooped up and stressed, and they miss real life,” explained Dr. Eric Klinenberg, NYU sociologist and author of Modern Romance. “People want physical intimacy and social intimacy. I think teenagers feel the loss of that as a kind of physical pain. There’s a need to be out in the world and develop independence. I think it’s painful to be a teenager in this environment… For a lot of high school students, especially those who go to small schools or those who have lived in the same place for a long time, or those who are shy, meeting people is difficult. So I’m guessing the digital format makes it a little bit easier for people to connect.”
Masterman students are experiencing the social effects of COVID-19. “I feel a lot more lonely now than I used to,” remarked Malcolm Margasak (12-3). “Just getting that interaction at school of, like, being in advisory and there’s a math test and everyone wants to complain about it. It’s also like a social ritual, and you get the feedback that ‘I’m part of a community, people care about me.’ … The most important things in life are relationships with people. That, in a sense, is all we are, is how we treat other people and how we interact with them. And once we don’t have that, there’s a desire to fill that hole. And people think the next logical step is dating apps. Or at least I did.” Margasak is part of a growing number of Masterman students who report downloading dating apps over quarantine.
Today, teenagers use these apps for long-term relationships, hookups, and entertainment. As one anonymous Masterman senior explained, “All of my friends were using it, and we had so much fun going on Zoom and sharing the screen and going through and talking to people together. I was in a relationship at the time so I was left out. When I got out of my relationship, I waited a week because I didn't want to jump right into it. So I downloaded Bumble and we made an account and it was really fun.”
For this student and many others, downloading dating apps is a social ritual. Another anonymous student likened the experience of downloading a dating app to getting a driver's license at sixteen. For this teenager it was a way to mark the freedoms of turning eighteen. In fact, the majority of dating apps require users to be eighteen, but many of the students interviewed were not eighteen when they downloaded dating apps. Older teenagers are using dating apps, whether for laughs or for true connections.
Dating apps are intentionally designed to be a social, entertaining experience. Almost all mobile dating apps allow for messaging through the app, and most prioritize users close to you. The most popular mobile dating apps, Tinder and Bumble, work by showing users profiles of other users. Users can choose to swipe right for “yes” or left for “no” on these profiles. If both users swipe right, they are notified that there is a match. Other apps such as Grindr allow users to view multiple profiles at once. Some apps use live video speed-dating.
“They’re kinda fun,” explained Bumble user Rory Macdonald (12-3). “Every once in a while you meet someone interesting, and then you get to talk to them. I've always enjoyed meeting new people, and this feels like a pandemic thing where normally I wouldn’t be doing something like this but I haven't had a venue to meet new people in a really long time.”
While providing entertainment and connection, dating apps can also give users a sense of validation. Many Masterman students described this experience while using dating apps. Margasak, who used Bumble in the past, explained, “You get almost an ego boost. It’s an attention thing that you feel validated by getting attention from strangers, but it’s also kinda gross. For me, at least, there is an adrenaline rush you get when you see someone swiped on your [profile], and there’s really a promise of what could be, like, ‘Wow I could be in a relationship with this person.’ But it’s not real, for me I have to remember it's not really real and you’re turning yourself into something that’s traded instead of something that’s viewed in a romantic manner.”
By granting instant gratification, dating apps are eliminating the nuances of getting to know someone in-person. “There’s a danger of this instant gratification of having to do nothing and just swiping and finding who you like,” reported one anonymous Masterman senior and Bumble user.
“It builds emotional maturity to have uncomfortable conversations, have to be rejected by people, and be on different wavelengths and navigate that in person, all while navigating the social consequences of having people you know about your life. It’s an uncomfortable part of in-person and in-school dating, but I think it's necessary.”
While dating apps change the way people communicate, they also change the way users view others. “The thing about social media is that they give you this really small amount of space to portray yourself to another person,” explained Rory Macdonald (12-3). “The issue is that when you put this lens of a relationship over it is when you're portraying this image, not your identity, what you want people to see about you, especially what you think is the most attractive part of your identity. I dislike that because it makes you self-conscious. [And then] swiping sucks because you're looking at these people and you’re like they could be a really nice person, but all they have is their Spotify and I don’t like those artists. You have to make these snap judgments about people with so little information and that feels really bad. And then you know people are doing the same thing to you to compound that feeling.”
There are dangers to dating apps beyond superficial judgments. Professor Klinenberg explained, “I think the big dangers are the ones everyone talks about: Kids getting in over their heads, winding up with someone whose age is inappropriate. There are predators online, everyone worries about them. It’s hard to know when you’re being manipulated, or worse. There’s another concern that people can say really awful things to each other on dating apps. Grownups can act very childlike when they're on those dating apps. I would hate for teenagers I know to be exposed to the kind of nonsense I saw when studying life on Tinder….I think digital tools allow for people to communicate and be intimate and share with each other in ways that would be difficult without them, but it also can be potentially dangerous. Kids can feel manipulated, kids can overshare, kids can share things that are inappropriate.”
The newest risk in the world of online dating is COVID-19. Many dating apps allow users to filter profiles by COVID-19 dating preferences. Virtual dates over Zoom or FaceTime allow for some of the interaction of a typical date. When it comes to in-person dating, Masterman students reported setting boundaries before dates. “You need to have awkward conversations before you hang out with them,” explained one Masterman senior and Bumble user. “Like, ‘I don’t want to have sex the first time we hang out, I don’t want to go to your apartment after the first time we hang out, I want to stay in a public place, I want to keep our masks on.’”
For Macdonald, dating during COVID-19 means COVID-19 testing. “Now when I’m going to meet new people I have to gauge their Covid safety and security level. I don’t see a lot of people outside of my family, so if i know I’m going to go on a date and I ask them if they’re getting tested and what they’re doing. It feels really weird to vet people like that,” he explained.
It is unknown whether dating apps are here to stay for Masterman. The majority of upperclassmen interviewed reported that they expect making connections in college will be easier this fall, and will not warrant dating apps. Some felt that it would depend on the culture of the college. When asked how young people will date in a post-COVID-19 world, Professor Klinenberg explained, “[Before COVID-19] things were already changing a lot. More and more people were dating online and communicating about really personal things online. The trends were in that direction, and I think now we’ve spent the last year doing almost everything on our screens, so for teenagers that will be more and more natural. But I don’t see it as a sea change. And my sense is that people are really eager to get back to real life with each other. So for sure people are flirting and connecting with each other online, but at the end of the day I don’t think people are satisfied with relationships that just take place on their iPhones.”
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