In a post-pandemic world, lots of things feel tougher, from buying a house to buying gas to even dating. Recent studies have suggested that 60+% of singles feel “overwhelmed” by the dating world. But why? Experts chimed in over on Vice, saying:

Apps have vastly altered how we date. They’re certainly not going anywhere any time soon – 300 million people have a dating app profile, and come 2035, more people will have met their partner online than in real life.

“Dating apps changed the digital dating landscape due to the collection of convenient features they brought to the table, which I have called ‘intimacies of convenience,’” explains Dr Rachel Katz, a digital media sociologist at the University of Salford who researches dating apps. “They are often image-based, mobile, geolocative, use a swiping mechanism, and have a ‘consent to chat’ feature. People had an active role in choosing who they wanted to match with.

“People like the convenience these features enable. But at the same time, this convenience can also bring negative experiences: transactional language, ghosting and objectifying language. Moreover, there are fewer social ramifications to these behaviours on dating apps compared to real-life interactions – it’s possible that repeated negative experiences might lead to dating app fatigue.

Dating apps aren’t going anywhere (in fact, we just added a new one to the field! Find OBC Dating for Android and iOS!). If we want to continue to enjoy the Single Life on apps though, we must stop acting like anonymity is a pass to be a dick. Be nice, be polite, don’t be a creep. Seems pretty simple, right?