As young adults, we felt the effects of Covid massively. You might have seen the tweets circulating about people documenting their ages pre and post-lockdown, emphasizing the enormous amount of time we have spent indoors, feeling uncertain and lost in the past almost two years. Therefore, it is not surprising that the impacts of Covid have stretched into the dating scene, forcing us onto dating apps, encouraging us to hurriedly move in with our partners, or even experience a form of long-distance during the first lockdown; it’s all been a mess!
Refinery29 described the pandemic as both ‘the great accelerator’ whilst the online dating site, Plenty of Fish defined ‘hesidating’ as “feeling indifferent about dating, unsure if you want to date seriously or casually because life, in general, is so uncertain right now”. According to their reports, 70% of single people relate to this definition.
The pandemic has subverted our understanding of time completely. Suddenly it feels like we are behind, in life, in work, in our formation of relationships and this is causing us to place immense pressure on ourselves to achieve certain goals. Jodie Cariss, therapist and founder of instant therapy service Self Space, added that “there’s a sense of urgency” to make up for lost time. We are desperate to feel like we haven’t fallen behind, another toxic consequence of our adherence to hustle culture.
So how much did online dating apps ease our anxieties? Well, during the pandemic, people took to dating apps as a means to sustain friendship, communication, and romantic connection. Tinder announced in March 2020, it had recorded a historic 3 billion swipes in one day and Bumble saw an increase in video calls by 70%. However, whilst online dating apps were a great way to meet people, a lack of in-person interaction has created two different kinds of daters.
Psychology Today announced the binary groups of “maximizers” and “satisfiers”. Whilst maximizers use copious amounts of research and time to make their decisions, satisfiers strictly follow their gut instinct, making decisions much more rapidly. But what are the criteria for these categories, and can you ever fit into just one of these binaries?
Similar to the introvert/extrovert debate, it is never quite that simple. Some people would add that sometimes the social conditions aren’t right to be able to follow our gut instinct, especially after the impacts of the pandemic. Due to the ever-developing climate of uncertainty we live in, it’s not always a simple decision of ‘yes’ or ‘no, there are environmental factors to weigh in, practicality issues, how many people want to jet off to the other side of the world to find love and restrict being apart from their family? Modern relationships in the Covid era are shaping up to be more difficult than a swipe left or right; we are learning to prioritize ourselves rather than cater to the needs of the people we desire.
Can we ever get past the feeling of ‘hesidating’? In a millennial world that inflates the value of romantic relationships, it can be hard to convince yourself you need a relationship when you are apprehensive about the dating world. In the recent developments of Omicron, it’s hard to imagine a world where we are free from the uncertainty surrounding Covid, and as a young person, this can have massive implications for the future – kids, relationships, marriage, all milestones that have been subverted by Covid, resulting in an attitude that prioritizes your own needs. However, maybe this will shape into a good thing? Maybe we needed a societal shift to eradicate the stigmas within a society that prided itself on upholding convention and tradition. Whilst I will not be the first person to praise Covid, it is interesting to analyze its social impacts on the population.
Perhaps it is okay to hesitate when dating, or to take every opportunity, or to follow your own guidelines – maybe, along the way, Covid helped us to be more ourselves and to live life according to our own rules.
For more news about dating apps and their influence, check out this article.
