The first and only time I've used dating apps was in the spring of 2021. I'd just moved to Los Angeles and wanted to see more of the city. But I soon grew tired of the actors, musicians and DJs who hounded me to attend their events; not to mention I didn't feel safe with total strangers and I'm particular about hygiene.
The three men who traveled to Menlo Park to meet up with a 13-year-old, who was really a police officer, were charged today by the District Attorney's Office, a prosecutor said. Police conducted a sting operation where an officer posed as a 13-year-old girl on WhatsApp and Badoo, a dating website, District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said. The officer spoke to three men, who, despite learning they were texting a minor, continued to text back, Wagstaffe said.
For all that dating apps feel ubiquitous in 2025, there's an equally forceful counterweight to them: frustration with dating apps and everything about them. But there's a growing body of evidence that people, especially in Gen Z, are logging out of these apps for good. In an article for WIRED, Daniel Roman observed that the percentage of Americans who were using dating apps dropped from 18% to 15% between 2019 and 2022.
Back when the dating app first launched in 2012, it was a completely anonymous hookup app - a "quick and safe way to find sex right now," according to one tagline from back in the day. But Pure has since pivoted to what Chantal Pesulima, the app's director of integrated marketing, calls a "full-blown dating app" focused on sexual openness, mutual consent and safety.
Analysis revealed that men who reported having more sex through dating apps were likely to score higher in psychopathy. The researchers, from the Hochschule Döpfer University of Applied Sciences in Germany, warned this behaviour could reflect exploitative tendencies and an ability to target vulnerable individuals. 'Individuals with a faster life strategy, particularly men high in psychopathy and sexual desires, report more mating success via dating apps,' they said.
When she finally got back on to the dating scene, she was wary. She decided to sign up for a new app where women could do background checks and share experiences of men they were dating. Users of the US-based Tea Dating Advice app, which is only available in America, could flag if potential partners were married or registered sex offenders. They could run reverse image searches to check against people using fake identities.
