There’s nothing wrong with using dating apps to look for love, but sometimes your dependency on them can get out of control. You can get carried away with how much you’re letting them intrude on your life and mess with your emotions. Here are 10 signs that you’re probably spending too much time on dating apps.
- You’re spending hours a day on there. It’s all you do in your spare time (and even when you’re supposed to be doing something else). You can swipe through a dating app for hours and just let the time pass. Maybe you’re aware of it or maybe all of a sudden hours have passed and you’ve hardly glanced up from your phone. Dating apps are taking up a huge chunk of your time, for better or worse.
- You’re checking your phone at inappropriate times. You’re at a work meeting, hanging out with friends, or out to dinner with your family. These are all times not to check your phone, yet you find yourself slipping it out of your purse regardless. You can’t help but tap away at a response to the newest person you’re messaging with. Maybe you even sneak in a few swipes while you’re at it.
- The apps are the first thing you look at before bed and in the morning. You stay up late at night scrolling through your dating apps. You want to get just a few more matches in before bed. Maybe you even stay up past your bedtime talking to a hottie or two. Same goes for the morning—you jump out of bed eager to check the notifications on your phone. These are symptoms of way too much time spent on dating apps!
- You have a bazillion dating apps on your phone. One, two, five isn’t enough. You want to make sure you aren’t putting all of your eggs in one basket and want to give multiple apps a chance. It’s to the point where you’re seeing multiple people on different ones and you’ve grown to know the quirks of each app. It’s probably getting a bit out of control, but you don’t see it that way. I mean, what’s one more?
- You’re feeling down more than you are happy about dating. At first, online dating was a thrill. You were so excited all of the time and feeling super hopeful. After a while, though, you started to get a bit jaded. You’re mostly bummed when messaging with people and you only sometimes get your hopes up when you match with someone these days. More often than not, you’re feeling down in the dumps as if you’re going to be single forever and ever.
- Your friends call you out on your addiction. You’re going on your fourth date in 24 hours. While this seems normal to you, your friends call you out on how excessive it is. They’re watching you run yourself ragged with online dating and they’re worried about your sanity and perhaps your STD status. It may be a good idea to listen to these people—after all, they know you best.
- You’re blowing off friends and activities for dating. Either you’re taking a Friday night to swipe away on an app or you’re skipping out on brunch with your bestie to go on a date. No matter what it looks like, you’re prioritizing dating way too much at the expense of the rest of your life. It may seem like not a big deal to do it once or twice, but it’s becoming a pattern that those around you are beginning to notice.
- You’re seeing people you’ve matched with in public. You’ve been in the dating app game for so long that you’re starting to recognize people in real life that you know from dating apps. Maybe it’s at the gym or maybe it’s randomly in line at the grocery store. Regardless, you’re starting to see how this is out of control. You’ve seen such a large percentage of your city over and over again on dating apps that the odds are high you see them in public.
- You swipe extra hard when you feel lonely. There are moments when you just want something to ease the pain of loneliness. You hate the sting of being by yourself on a Friday night, so you feverishly swipe through dating app land. You spend even more time and you go even harder when you’re in these mindsets. You can’t help but think that just the right match would solve your problem.
- You use apps when you need a confidence boost. Sure, it’s OK to get a bit of an ego boost from dating apps, but it starts to become problematic when that’s your only source of confidence. Other people aren’t a reliable use of feeling good about yourself. That needs to come from within, it won’t come from how many matches you have or how many conversations you have going.
