How Tinder Is Tied With Our Social Identities

When we examine the app’s environment, we can see that tinder is a cultural artifact in many ways. It reflects and reshapes the users’ values and desires. In this post, I will discuss how the app is reinforcing ageism and the superficial standards.

Ageism is defined as a prejudice towards someone due to age. The ads within the app tend to feature models in the 20s participating in youthful activities like road trips, parties, and concerts. It’s evident that the target audience for these apps is 20-30 year-olds. A younger user base is also encouraged through its careful pricing strategies, in which a lower fee is offered to those under 30.

Users are also given the ability to choose an age range of their potential matches. The minimum age is 18, and the selection increases by each year until “50+”. “50+” aggregates everyone who is older than 50 into a single, broad category. In this way, it promotes ageism tendencies because seniors are grouped together and not as individualized as all the other ages. Furthermore, it promotes societal pressures on people over 30 to be in a relationship because it favours young adults (20-30) and provides less attention to those who aren’t in this age group. In this way, the app is teaching certain cultural values and not a neutral actor.

Another example is the way individuals create their profile. The basic user can select up to 6 photos and have the option of writing a short biography. Since people swipe on the basis of appearance, that is the main focus on the app. In this way, it app teaches its users to value appearance and superficial qualities in the initial stages of selection rather than other traits such as personality.

Within the backend of the app, Tinder uses an algorithm to sort people based on attractiveness known as the ELO score (Carr, 2016). This score is used to determine which profiles are shown to the user, usually within the same ELO score range. This further reinforces the values of appearance rather than personality. We can see how socio-technological affordances are at work since the app aims to replicate cultural values, however in doing so, it also shapes the user.