Welcome to an episode that might have to feed you for two weeks. We’re going to hit ten to a dozen research papers and have a mighty discussion.
Let’s keep talking about the dystopian conditions intermingling with dating and relating, and do it in listicle form. Here are 9 challenges – some of which we all know, but the research will be new. And some of which I bet you haven’t heard elsewhere AND the research will be new.
To set the stage:
Last time we discussed the way that the “bad guys” we’re looking out for have been eating up the same material we have on the internet. So that our counterintelligence is used against us and predators become more skilled in their hunt.
That hunt, of course, for many of the predators being no different than OUR hunt for love, connection, understanding, meaning in life.
And our efforts, of course, being marked by similar desires to succeed interpersonally despite mental and emotional challenges that make it difficult and often harmful.
So that we, too, need to understand ourselves as sharks circling in waters. Our strongest instincts, not the ones we want to lead with. And our well-meaning trials in love, painful, while we just try to eat.
We also recently discussed dystopian worlds – bad places marked by technology, surveillance, and oppression - and their potential for promoting partnership through a desire for “shared reality” to stabilize the chaos.
We’ve also talked about the dooming relationship machines known as phones. We can’t get to know each other on them, but we think we can. We CAN instill a false sense of intimacy with them, while we think we can’t.
And altogether, the role of technology in partnership has been a difficult one.
Today, let’s expand the conversation and discuss the complicating factors associated with tech and togetherness.
What’s stopping us from successfully finding love in a time when we have maximum exposure to other humans?
Too many choices for singles to settle
Surprising no one, we must quickly mention the overabundance of choice.
Everyone is trying to “maximize” by pinning the best partner possible. When there are infinite options, there are infinite reasons not to ever settle. Which prevents everyone from getting what they want and need – love - and keeps us endlessly searching.
Let’s hit some research and move on.
A Rejection Mind-Set: Choice Overload in Online Dating
The paradox of modern dating is that online platforms provide more opportunities to find a romantic partner than ever before, but people are nevertheless more likely to be single.
.. having extensive choice can have various adverse effects, such as paralysis (i.e., not making any decision at all) and decreased satisfaction.
… when asked to pick the best partner, access to more partner profiles resulted in more searching, more time spent on evaluating bad choice options, and a lower likelihood of selecting the option with the best personal fit (Wu & Chiou, 2009). Likewise, when a choice set increases, people end up being less satisfied with their ultimate partner choice and more prone to reverse their decision (D’Angelo & Toma, 2017). The adverse effects of choice overload are also mentioned in articles in popular media mentioning phenomena such as “Tinder fatigue” (Beck, 2016) or “dating burnout” (Blair, 2017).
We hypothesized the existence of a rejection mind-set: The continued access to virtually unlimited potential partners makes people more pessimistic and rejecting. Across three studies, participants immediately started to reject more hypothetical and actual partners when dating online, cumulating on average in a decrease of 27% in chance on acceptance from the first to the last partner option. This was explained by an overall decline in satisfaction with pictures and perceived dating success. For women, the rejection mind-set also resulted in a decreasing likelihood of having romantic matches. Our findings suggest that people gradually “close off” from mating opportunities when online dating.
AKA we get so frustrated, overwhelmed, and defeated trying to sift through all the options and make sense of the choices – which, spoilers, most often fail; the dropoff between matches and first dates is huge; the dropoff between first dates and second dates is also enormous – that we just stop shopping.
Everyone I know goes through periods of being on the apps and retroactively deleting them for a sense of sanity. First the selection is exciting and addicting. Soon, that wears off and we feel worn down by it.
… but we often forget that or over romanticize the idea.
And to further the challenge, check out this next article. This is going to sound like the same point over again, but it takes a turn. We are here for that turn:
Too many ego temptations for partners
This is from an article I found called;
Too Many Fish in the Sea? Choice Overload in Dating (Psychology Today)
..participants who felt they had too many romantic options became overwhelmed and found it difficult to choose a partner. As a result, people experiencing choice overload struggled to make a decision about whom to date and, as a result, were more likely to remain single.
While the researchers (suggest) that choice overload may allow people to slow down and make the best choice, other research contradicts this idea, suggesting that choice overload leads to poorer decisions when they are finally made.
(and)
The study found… People who believed they had more romantic options were less likely to be single. As we might expect, having many choices can help people find partners.
So the same results as before have been reiterated. Myriad choices don’t mean better outcomes. They might lead to no choice being made. OR worse choices being made – perhaps because we run out of patience and eventually choose whomever we’ve landed on out of exhaustion.
An interesting thought, right? Maybe all the searching produces negative returns.
Question though, and my reason for bringing up this redundant research… did anyone else catch this and also have an inquiry:
People who believed they had more romantic options were less likely to be single.
And did you notice there’s no causation here. Just correlation.
This statement doesn’t say “those who are single and believe they have more romantic options are more likely to partner up.” They don’t say “optimism leads to success – it’s all a mindset issue.”
They said, in different words, “those who are partnered (non single) believe they have more romantic options.” Which is a very different statement.
And another big watch-out point when relating in dystopia. “A person is as committed as their options.” Commitment is hard to keep when there are so many other choices out there.
When all these romantic options are available on the apps, the people we DO end up partnering with 1) are aware of the alternative options awaiting on the market and 2) presumably haven’t been actively perusing the goods for a while, so they probably estimate that the colorful, opportunity-filled shopping experience is a little different than the reality of it.
When we’re NOT on the dating apps – like when we’re in relationship - they sound like a much better idea than I think we can mostly agree is the reality.
Here’s another article:
Swiping more, committing less: Unraveling the links among dating app use, dating app success, and intention to commit infidelity
People who found their romantic partner on a mobile dating app might be particularly likely to continue their quest for a relationship, despite already being in a committed relationship. For instance, an experimental study conducted in the U.S., in which undergraduate students could select a partner from a large versus small pool of potential partners, revealed that participants who selected a partner from a large dating pool were less satisfied with their choice and more likely to change their choice compared to those with fewer options.
Affordances structure an interaction between actor and object by making certain actions possible and ruling out other actions. In the case of mobile dating apps, the mobility affordance enhances the spontaneity and frequency of use because users can generally use dating apps anywhere at any time as long as they have an Internet connection.. users in a committed relationship are constantly reminded of the amount and quality of singles within their proximity. Moreover, this proximity affordance is known to facilitate meeting in real life (Yeo & Fung, 2016), thereby further challenging those in a committed relationship.
The lure of choice makes the idea of diving back into the dating pool seem attractive; knowing there are novel options and being told that it’s open season on the apps can convince an ego that it could be more validated than it is partnered up.
And without extremely recent memory of how difficult it is to be out there dating - coming from the stability of a committed relationship and working off memories of romantic attempts from earlier (less wounded) times in personal and societal development, when stakes were lower and we obviously had some success to be coming from a relationship status in the present - we’re more likely to have illusions about how we would perform amongst the competition and enjoy the process of sorting through all the matches.
Plus, if we matched successfully on the apps once… what’s to say it can’t happen again? When we don’t rely on happenstantial meet-cutes, it seems easier to let go of the monkeybar and reach for the next.
With the apps existing and knowledge of all the opportunities that await, there can be a false confidence and a “grass is always greener,” combined threat which can put established commitments at risk, as the delight of bottomless choice and the game of the individual are overestimated.
So that dating in dystopia might seem to optimistically await, after a long or short time away from the paralyzing overwhelm of choice.
And, building on this, our next point…
Even if the relationship is secure, you might not feel that way
Which has always been true.
But now that we know there’s an on-the-go shopping market for new humans and maximizing for the optimal specimen has become a partnership challenge… how many of us feel like our partnership IS one fight away from being replaced? Like we’re always at risk of becoming obsolete? Upgraded to a new model? Ditched for a return to tinder?
Have dating apps degraded all trust and the sanctity of partnership?
Have they created or deepened our attachment issues?
Our negative self-esteem?
Is it even possible to happily partner up, when we have choice and proximity affordances corrupting our minds?
You used to have to worry about neighbors and coworkers becoming your Joleen. Now? Any person on earth could be.
Dating apps’ existence and the subsequently increased relational distrust once we are partnered up; another hallmark of the times that our parents didn’t deal with.
So are:
Monetized misinformation and delusion fodder factories for fake realities
Yeah, it’s a point we’ve spoken on before.
Untruths and material to support unhealthy perspectives are available for every possible viewpoint. Propaganda - political, psychological, personal, and beyond – is spread far and wide.
If people don’t agree with us, they’re immediately unmatched.
If they DO agree with us, we both spiral further into insanity.
And let’s not underestimate the threat of learned helplessness in this situation either. Something I believe has been a major outcome of the internet psych boom.
For example… did anyone else read this?
A double-edged hashtag: Evaluation of #ADHD-related TikTok content and its associations with perceptions of ADHD
Existing literature underscores the disagreement between health professionals and TikTok content creators about health information on the platform. A recent systematic review concluded that authors of scientific articles find social media misinformation prevalent across many health-related topics, including vaccination, noncommunicable diseases, and eating disorders [16].
Specific to mental health content, others found that #autism and #ADHD fell within TikTok’s 10 most-viewed health-related hashtags [6]. Yet, among the most popular TikTok videos providing psychoeducation about autism, 41% were rated by the research team as “inaccurate” (e.g., “You can determine if you are autistic using this simple three-question test”) and 32% as “overgeneralized” (e.g., “Autistic adults never want to socialize”).
Prior research suggests a similar trend for psychoeducational material about ADHD.. For example, in recent work, 52% of ADHD-related videos evaluated by a psychiatrist and a psychiatry resident with clinical experience in ADHD were classified as “misleading,” and only 21% as “useful” [19]. Although content creators did not necessarily make diagnostic claims, the expression of ADHD symptoms can vary from person to person, and treatments that work for one individual may not apply to everyone with ADHD. Failing to provide this nuance may invertedly contribute to misunderstanding of ADHD and could potentially lead to inappropriate generalizations about the condition.
Overgeneralization could lead to viewers thinking that their symptoms are more severe than they are, or that things that are part of normal human experience indicate a disorder.
Formal diagnosis often increases access to resources and treatment from mental health professionals; instead, people with a self-diagnosis seem to turn to the large online community for information, support, and comfort.
(selective socializing to support chosen reality)
And:
Interestingly, people’s use of social media for information and support regarding physical health conditions is associated with more switching of doctors (“doctor shopping”) and suboptimal patient-provider interactions [32] – although the directionality of the effect is impossible to conclude.
At its best, mental health content on social media from peers with lived experience may combat the scarcity of easily and financially accessible resources from mental health professionals. Some people also turn to digital media such as TikTok because they feel afraid, uncertain, or alone, and have internalized stigma about their symptoms – all of which are barriers to seeking face-to-face support.
However, social media platforms, like TikTok, are designed in ways that may not be conducive to effective psychoeducation.
Easily digestible, short, and snappy videos created to grab users’ attention quickly may make it challenging to prioritize nuance [10,11]. Crucially, the TikTok algorithm, ultimately, aims to extend the time users spend on the platform. To do so, TikTok leverages engagement cues such as viewing time, likes, comments, saves, and shares from previous visits to the platform to ensure the videos served to the user cater to their taste, in a process that can go largely unnoticed by users [12,13]. The human tendency for confirmation bias, by which users preferentially read information that supports their pre-existing beliefs about health issues, while ignoring or harshly evaluating information that contradicts them, may compound this process [14]. Repeated exposure to content that aligns with one’s pre-existing beliefs increases the content’s perceived credibility and the probability of sharing it, a phenomenon referred to as the echo-chamber effect [15].
AKA - Any media that’s trying to capture your attention for paid advertising? Is going to be twisting truths into something more sensational than reality. And this applies to our self-help-toks heavily. It causes us to overestimate the information we’re presented that we agree with. And to disregard what we don’t want to see or hear. Which then goes on to influence what others can see or hear. Creating specialized online communities where misinformation may be king. But human emotion prevents us from seeing it that way.
In other words, our realities have been largely created by advertising dollars, which have promoted short-form, inaccurate, videos that gain traction when they hit us viscerally or make us feel better about ourselves.
I believe, creating an internet world of, often, learned helplessness. Which has been “evidenced” by sensationalized and oversimplified misinformation.
But think about the implications, broadly.
If viewers of this content are shopping for doctors who appreciate and validate the social media learnings, don’t you think they’re also shopping for belief validating partners?
And harming themselves in the process?
If someone believed what they learned about ADHD on an incorrect tiktok and another person rejected their false proposition… that probably forever scarred or disbanded the association. When you identify with a piece of information and someone doubts it, it feels like they’re saying they don’t believe in you. Relationships may have ended or failed to begin due to psych misinformation that was attractive for one party to heavily identify with.
And.
If someone believed what they learned about ADHD from an inaccurate tiktok and another person accepted their wrongful proposition… that probably altered the relationship dynamic and functionality of the individual, bending both around what was picked up on tiktok, to make everyone less healthy. When you identify with a piece of information about your diminished capacity and someone agrees with it, it feels like they’re saying you also should believe less in you. That they’re agreeing to your version of reality and confirming it.
So, in so many cases, from false informational absorption – AKA interacting with the internet which is selling each of us content (hooking our attention) for advertising dollars - we might be diminishing our chances at relationship, decomposing relationships we already have, and decreasing our own estimations of self which also has a way of affecting the relationship.
Misinformation and the existence of supposed “evidence” no matter what your perspective is have become hindrances to dating, relating, and maintaining health across time. Because there are too many realities to choose from, and information catering to each of them.
Doomed if your algorithms don’t agree.
Doomed if they do.
And similarly, a point that was breathed upon in our first DnD episode:
AI is a more attractive and addictive communication partner for the brain than other humans
And it supports defensive illusions, delusions.
If we take the desire for a preferred reality, combine it with the increased comfort provided by constant validatory dopamine, and the need for a sense of connection – we get? The AI relationships that scratch so many itches.
At the expense of real relationships and need satiation.
And with the added risk of AI psychosis.
But while it lasts, the behavior is highly rewarding.
It’s loneliness satiating. And more reinforcing than challenging relationships with real people, if we only focus on the most temporary timeline.
Especially because we can essentially design our ideal communication partner, including all manner of toxic preferences.
Cruel companionship: How AI companions exploit loneliness and commodify intimacy
There has been a rise in the use of AI companion apps explicitly designed to provide entertainment, friendship, romantic engagement and therapeutic support. They often incorporate anthropomorphic design features including human-like avatars, customisable personality traits and the ability to adapt to user preferences.
The proliferation of AI companions begs critical questions about how safe they are, whether they can deliver on their promise of reducing loneliness and how they might affect human relationships.
We argue that AI companion products can exploit the loneliness and vulnerability of certain users by design choices that seek to maximise engagement and can reproduce harmful stereotypes. We introduce the concept of the engagement–wellbeing paradox to describe the tension at the heart of AI companions: while marketed as sources of meaningful connection, some of these AIs are designed to deepen user dependence, often at the expense of their wellbeing.
This logic gives rise to what we term cruel companionship, where users form affective attachments to algorithms that are incapable of meeting their genuine emotional needs, but which increase their dependence on the products marketed to help them. These dynamics are further underpinned by the exploitation of AI companions’ racialised and gendered identities, as these AIs are frequently coded with aesthetic and behavioural traits that draw on longstanding stereotypes of servitude and docility.
Less attention within the literature on AI relationships has been paid to the racialised and gendered nature of many AI companion apps and how these might lead to specific forms of harm such as the perpetuation of gendered or racialised stereotypes (Kirk et al., 2025; Shevlin, 2024; Zhang et al., 2025).
One study of Redditors using the Replika chatbot found male participants enjoyed ‘training’ their Replika AIs into ideal bot girlfriends while also desiring a limited degree of human-like spontaneity and sassiness in their replies (Depounti et al., 2022). These researchers found that a crucial feature of AI girlfriends was a mixture of hyperfeminised innocence and sexiness. They also found that the customisable nature of the product and the ability to create a unique experience were essential in activating users’ gendered imaginaries of AI girlfriends. In addition, racial characteristics are sometimes presented to users as customisable traits of AI companions, allowing users to select for different ‘exotic’ ethnicities, catering to stereotypical racialised desires (Zhang et al., 2025).
So we can maximize our AI partners when maximizing humans doesn’t pan out. And gain all the subservience we want out of an internet girlfriend when real people have too many opinions and sassy things to say.
On top of the overall risks of AI:
The unquestionable validation stream, access to pleasing chemicals from the fake interaction, and illusory ability to disband one’s own uncertainty? The ability to have an idealized, continually agreeable, falsely empathetic, dangerously stereotypical for comfort, “companion?” When everything else is so hard and less likely to produce satisfying results?
Yeah, of course it draws us in. Provides comfort.
But with a cost. It’s a distraction from human relationships and a reason not to work through the hard parts of them. People, at best, will only be intermittently reinforcing. This fake voice on a screen can be constantly rewarding.
And to nod to our last point about required information and perspective matching - AI bots are also creating more toxic individuals who are getting their most extreme perspectives confirmed by machines, which are crawling the internet for any supposed evidence, which they will find… because see previous point about misinformation to support every perspective existing on the internet.
So, sure, AI takes singles off the market. It comforts people in unsatisfying relationships so they can stay in them. It also creates worlds between individuals’ viewpoints. It encourages unequal power foundations, unhealthy relationship dynamics, gender and ethnic stereotypes.
And it can encourage psychotic breaks when these more comfortable chosen realities become the primary ones. Which I think we can all agree, is a hindrance to partnering.
Delusional Experiences Emerging From AI Chatbot Interactions or “AI Psychosis”
Decades of research have identified a set of core vulnerabilities associated with psychosis onset, including genetic predisposition, childhood trauma, cannabis or substance use, sleep disruption, social isolation, and cognitive biases such as jumping to conclusions or an externalizing attributional style [44,45]. When transposed into digital contexts, these same vulnerabilities may interact with novel affordances of AI systems to produce a distinct but convergent pathway toward symptom emergence.
For instance, a user with a prior history of psychosis or schizotypal traits who engages in nightly, emotionally intense dialogue with an anthropomorphized chatbot may experience reinforced self-referential ideation and heightened salience attribution, mechanisms that mirror the early prodromal phase of psychosis [37]. Similarly, individuals exposed to trauma or chronic interpersonal threat may project attachment representations onto AI companions, perceiving them as protective or omniscient entities.
So fake romance with robots? Likely to be self-confirming in a potentially psychotic way.
Prolonged or nocturnal use, solitary engagement, and reliance on unmoderated chatbots for emotional support appear particularly hazardous, as they combine cognitive fatigue, social deprivation, and unstructured reinforcement. These variables resemble psychosocial stressors known to precipitate symptom exacerbations in schizophrenia, such as circadian disruption or critical life events [25].
And here comes another nod to misinformation as an addiction point:
Another emerging concern lies in platform-level dynamics: algorithms optimized for engagement rather than safety may inadvertently reward extreme or self-referential discourse, subtly validating delusional content. This echoes the “echo-chamber” effect described in digital media research, where recommender systems intensify preexisting beliefs through selective exposure [46].
And how about an overview of the ways that AI as a substitute for real relationships causes life-sabotaging events, which will sound a lot like all the phone relationship warnings I’ve been doling out for a few episodes?
AI technologies may modulate perception, belief, and affect, altering the prereflective sense of reality that grounds human experience.
The argument unfolds through 4 complementary lenses.
First, within the stress-vulnerability model, AI acts as a novel psychosocial stressor. Its 24-hour availability and emotional responsiveness may increase allostatic load, disturb sleep, and reinforce maladaptive appraisals.
Second, the digital therapeutic alliance, a construct describing relational engagement with digital systems, is conceptualized as a double-edged mediator. While empathic design can enhance adherence and support, uncritical validation by AI systems may entrench delusional conviction or cognitive perseveration, reversing the corrective principles of cognitive-behavioral therapy for psychosis.
Third, disturbances in theory of mind offer a cognitive pathway: individuals with impaired or hyperactive mentalization may project intentionality or empathy onto AI, perceiving chatbots as sentient interlocutors. This dyadic misattribution may form a “digital folie à deux,” where the AI becomes a reinforcing partner in delusional elaboration.
Fourth, emerging risk factors, including loneliness, trauma history, schizotypal traits, nocturnal or solitary AI use, and algorithmic reinforcement of belief-confirming content may play roles at the individual and environmental levels.
Building on this synthesis, we advance a translational research agenda: (1) empirical studies to quantify dose-response relationships between AI exposure, stress physiology, and psychotic symptomatology; (2) integration of digital phenomenology into clinical assessment and training; (3) embedding therapeutic design safeguards into AI systems, such as reflective prompts and “reality-testing” nudges; (4) creation of ethical and governance frameworks for AI-related psychiatric events, and (5) development of environmental cognitive remediation, a preventive intervention aimed at strengthening contextual awareness and reanchoring experience in the physical and social world.
Hmm. Isn’t it great when the research blurb ends on the point we’ve been screaming about all month? Love it.
Technology and AI can create corrupted worlds for lonely minds. And being pulled back down to this planet might be required WITHIN AI platforms for them to be nontoxic. Non-devasting for individuals and human relationships.
As they stand? They’re confirmation machines that can’t be matched in reality. Nothing will be as self-validating or esteem-building as an AI conversation.
The human mind prefers this reality to real reality. And that includes real human conversations and connections, which one might say, are necessary to ground us on earth.
Now for three points that we haven’t touched on at all in prior posts.
Privacy for none
In our dystopian time of digital surveillance, we do the same to each other.
There’s a record of everything! How enticing. And they’re not required to tear apart your whole house to find any of the evidence. Hell, half of it is on social media for everyone to see. The other half… surprisingly observable. You just need to guess a few digits.
OR demand open access to their phone, email, location services, social accounts.
In our tech-run age, is privacy part of partnership?
When your life diary is one passcode away, maybe you lose a right to self-intimacy?
When you have GPS in your pocket, maybe you aren’t free to wander unobserved?
Does dating mean you’re gaining access to every piece of your partner’s inner and outer world, and them, yours?
With all the information we can have about each other….. should we? And are we due that data?
One might say that read receipts are an overstep (I would, it’s none of your business when I read vs respond to something). And that only begins to scratch the surface of the ways we can track each other.
Privacy paradox among romantic couples: the use of location sharing apps
The results of H1-1 show that individuals who accept applying location sharing apps in their romantic relationships tend to experience less intrusion. In other words, although it is possible that people in their romantic relationships are forced to apply location sharing apps, the results of the current study exhibit that the initial unwillingness can be reduced.
From the viewpoint of trust and commitment, romantic monitoring is not always seen as negative (Bevan, 2018). People who accept monitoring may view it as necessary or beneficial, hence the level of perceived intrusion reduces, as privacy calculus theory postulates (Lee and Kwon, 2015).
Meanwhile, it is possible that individuals who enter romantic relationships form social norms of monitoring. In the Taiwanese cultural environment, individuals may accept monitoring behaviors to align with social expectations. They accept such social norms, and therefore, do not feel intruded upon.
So if you learn to be okay with surveillance (as we all have been trained), then it becomes a positive relationship point. The message is “they care enough to watch me like a hawk,” and we’ve transformed this into a social norm.
… to a point.
The confirmation of H1-2 shows that the more the information technology can perform tasks in romantic relationships, the higher the level of intrusion that is perceived. For example, an individual may frequently check their partner’s status, e.g., on an hourly basis, and constantly check up on the partner. Even though the partner may have accepted the monitoring beforehand, it could lead to negative responses, because the motivations of online monitoring can be associated with negativities (Hernández-Santaolalla and Hermida, 2020).
…. the association between scope and perceived intrusion represents a way of people in romantic relationships to maintain relationships. Scholars viewed privacy concerns as less applicable to intimate relationships (Levy and Schneier, 2020), but the results show that the level of perceived intrusion is influenced by scope, which indicates the role of privacy boundaries. In other words, privacy does matter in romantic relationships when people employ technology to manage their relationships to an extreme intensity.
H2-2 confirms a positive association between scope and mate-guarding behavior, and this is to say that individuals employ location sharing apps as a tool to exclude competitors and retain their romantic relationships. This unexpected result.. suggests that in mutually accepted location-sharing contexts, mate-guarding behaviors may be perceived as expressions of care, commitment, or relational investment, rather than control or distrust.
So we’ll give up privacy if the motivations and intentions seem correct to us. If our partner is seen as extremely invested, not insecure and controlling.
A tightrope walk that many of us are predisposed or willing to misinterpret. Let’s say that much.
… The relationship of romantic partners is influenced by the application of location sharing apps, because the acceptance of monitoring negatively associates with perceived intrusion. This means an individual forfeits the privacy concerns in romantic relationships. Meanwhile, the association between scope and perceived intrusion demonstrates the significance of privacy issues in romantic relationships, even though previous studies viewed it as less significant (Levy and Schneier, 2020). In other words, the role of privacy concerns still matters, but the level is flexible. Regarding the use of location sharing apps in romantic relationships, the findings exhibit that romantic couples manage to find a balance between privacy concerns and mate-guarding, because both factors contribute to relationship satisfaction.
So, do we have the option of privacy in relationship, in dystopic times?
A: Apparently you’ll need to be flexible about it. Not interpret it as a sign of distrust. And accept monitoring if you want to send a positive signal to your partner.
But of course, with the rise of app usage… do we have a say in any of it? Can we even control how much people can ascertain about our life?
How about one quick point to scare us all:
By the time we’re on the app, we’ve given up our privacy
Dating Dangerously: Risks Lurking within Mobile Dating Apps
One similarity employed by all of these dating apps is the active proximity based location system.17 Proximity-based systems continuously broadcast and track a user’s location to help facilitate meeting people nearby.18 But the sharing and storage of such intimate and private information on the app, whether purposely given by the user or not, raises concerns about the user’s privacy and safety.19 Based on this feature, predators lurking in the digital shadows of the dating apps can ascertain a user’s address, view their movements throughout the day and eventually, virtually stalk a user.20 They can do so by monitoring and keeping track of the user’s location when he or she indicates he or she is at home, at work, or elsewhere, by noting how many miles away the users are from each other at that time.21 The constant tracking allows dangerous users to reconstruct daily patterns of their prey.22 As a result, the inherent characteristics of these modern apps coax unscrupulous users into exploiting potential lovers.23 Coupled with the lack of restrictions on a user’s ability to access personal information, this free flow of information opens the door to dangers associated with a lax in privacy protections and worse, the dangers associated with acts of violence facilitated by the app.24
We might allow our partners to track our locations. But the apps might allow strangers to do the same, without our consent or acceptance. Creating dangerous scenarios we don’t estimate when we’re flippantly flicking through profiles.
One might say, a large danger and hindrance to modern dating… is feeling like you’re inviting stalking and harassment into your life, not a romantic interest.
But let’s not spend too much time with the boogeyman. Let’s return to partnership profiles, and the ways those complicate early dating.
Decide: Immediately hide or discuss the past?
Back to this mention from a past point. Regarding privacy and digging up dirt about each other:
“Hell, half of it is on social media for everyone to see.”
But do you have to share everything with a partner? And what if you aren’t ready?
Here’s what I mean. In the early days of dating, you give someone your Insta, and they immediately see everything you’ve done for the last decade. A perfect jumping off point for their own judgments, assumptions, insecurities, and fears, in the absence of knowing you better.
This can be like taking ten steps backwards in your connection, as they spark their own distrust. Then those ten steps have to be made up for, just to get back to a neutral point again.
Which might not be possible. A picture on the internet in the early days might be the relational thorn in the side that can never be healed.
So, what can we do?
- Immediately own up to everything, having deep, intense, conversations about every single caption or post or like or comment. Forget if you were emotionally ready to talk about your ex or had the right words prepared for the next partner – it’s time to go or else your new partner might. And hopefully you don’t fuck the situation up by saying the wrong thing in your unprepared state.
- Hide it. Don’t let them access your social media (shady). Or go through and edit your past posts (also shady). Or lie about reality when they inquire about them (I’m not sure why that feels like the most shady?). Establishing the relationship on omissions and untruths, because it wasn’t allowed to unfold with a natural pace of “getting to know each other.”
Social media! It’s not really that great to hand someone a flipbook of your past while they go looking for red flags in the present and you’re hoping to avoid all points of distaste or distrust for the future. It takes away your right to discuss things on your time, in the best way possible. Plus it gives them access to your prior versions of self, which might be very different from the current edition.
And then, after that, the social media disclosures may continue, creating additional obstacles to long-term romantic intimacy.
Effects of self- and partner’s online disclosure on relationship intimacy and satisfaction
Most research on the effects of disclosure on close relationships have been done using offline disclosure. However, disclosure done online has disparate features and thus its effects on relationships may also differ. In five studies and using primes emulating Facebook timelines and messages, we compared the effects of disclosure depth on intimacy and satisfaction in online vs. offline contexts, in romantic vs. friend relationships, and with differing content (self- vs. partner-focused). After demonstrating consistent differences, we examined one mechanism that accounted for the differential effects of online vs. offline disclosure in romantic relationships: perceived inclusivity of the recipients. Results revealed that greater disclosure was associated with higher relational intimacy and satisfaction when done offline (Studies 1 and 4), and lower intimacy and satisfaction when done online (Studies 1–4), in both the discloser (Study 1) and his or her partner (Studies 2–4). The negative association between online disclosure and intimacy was present in romantic relationships, but not in friendships (Study 1). Importantly, this effect only appeared when perceived inclusivity of recipients was high (Study 4). Focusing the online disclosure content on the partner/relationship dissipated its negative effects (Study 5). Together, these studies extend further knowledge on how the effects of disclosure are contextualized, and suggest that disclosure done publicly online may be detrimental to romantic relationships.
Social media! We… don’t love it at DnD HQ. It sets romantic relationships up for distrust when you’re new to each other and diminished intimacy as the partnership ages.
Also, for this next, final, reason:
Fear of public humiliation
Lastly, and a short one…
Have you heard this research about adolescents and young adults not drinking or having house parties? And the reason supposedly being “prevention of embarrassment”?
Nothing is safe anymore because of cell phones and the popularization of group shamings. Cringe culture.
And one has to wonder… how does this also relate to dating, when so much of it is screenshottable? When so many influencer accounts center around doling out advice at the expense of someone’s online mistake? And so many group chats are pools of piranhas? When online groups exist for shit talking dating app users and warning each other about their supposed offenses?
The Psychological Impact of Cancel Culture: Anxiety, Social Isolation, and Self-Censorship
In the era of social media, cancel culture has spread widely and affected people from all walks of life. Its psychological impacts are significant and include increased anxiety, social isolation, and self-censorship despite the fact that it is frequently described in terms of moral accountability. People who are the targets of cancel culture experience severe emotional suffering as a result of cyberbullying, reputational harm, and public humiliation. These experiences subsequently foster a vicious cycle of fear and repression of free speech. Individual well-being and societal advancement are at long-term risk due to cancel culture’s societal repercussions, which include heightened polarization and a reluctance to have candid conversations.
This new form of “accountability” – if we want to call it that – might lead to decreased communication between potential daters. And increased communication on message boards that support the unhealthy, often gendered, perspectives on either side.
With, I hate to say, men taking the brunt of the abuse.
Men seeking women: awkwardness, shame, and other affective encounters with dating apps
In contrast to the LGBTQ+ people and cis heterosexual women in our study, cis heterosexual and bisexual men ‘seeking women’ seldom expressed concerns regarding their personal safety — although many acknowledged women’s concerns. However, ‘men seeking women’ were far more likely to describe negative affects relating to apps and app use, including shame, contempt, embarrassment and ‘awkwardness’.
Participants’ descriptions of bad feelings and bad encounters did not primarily relate to situations where they felt physically unsafe, but to their emotional and affective reactions to app use, and to incidents where they were aware they had threatened or harmed others — or had the potential to do so.
If this trend persists, will we continue to see an increase in incel attitudes and behaviors?
Will men become more dangerous, offline, where digital evidence isn’t recording every move?
Will the sexes stop coming together, at all, as our pocket communication devices actually present greater dangers than connection opportunities?
One can’t say.
But I can say, “we’re creating less authentic, less fruitful, and less overall, matches due to the online crowd-policing effort.” And I have empathy for men who are still giving it a real shot.
And also… in light of everything we learned today… women and nonbinaries, who are still giving it a real shot.
Wrap
Those difficult points, trying to connect in a technological tumble, were?
Too many options to choose
Too many options to stay committed
Too many options to feel secure in that commitment
Prevalence of inaccurate, perspective-supporting information, that requires agreement in alternate realities
AI personalization, comforts, and delusions outweigh human rewards
Privacy for none, including location services
Forfeit of privacy upon creating the app profile
Conversational control and purposeful disclosure are gone, thanks to social media
Fear of public humiliation makes communication hazardous and inauthentic, especially for men
And this concludes our (first) rundown of digital dystopia as it impacts and impedes dating.
May you find compassion for yourself in sorting through these all-new challenges to the human race, as you continue gloriously
Dating
In
Dystopia
And I’ll talk to you soon.