HandoutAfter using dating apps with little success for eight years, a woman met the love of her life just two weeks after deciding to ditch them.
Lowri Rose, 26, from Cardiff, said she had been using the apps on and off since she was 18 but she grew increasingly unhappy with how they made her feel.
Having initially sought “validation” through them, she said she found app users to be too focused on her appearance and she had received unsolicited “vulgar” messages from people on one app.
Lowri said she quit the apps when she was 24 and met her fiance at a dinner hosted by mutual friends.
Lowri, a social media manager, said they both felt a strong connection after meeting each other that day in April last year.
“I just knew that we were going to get married and he just knew too,” she said.
“He told me he was going to marry me on our first date.”
The couple, who had both made the decision to leave dating apps before they met, got engaged in June.
“Neither of us wanted to date anyone as we were both quite scarred by it,” she said.
Lowri added meeting her partner offline left her feeling “hopeful and excited to have a little crush”.
“It felt ever so natural – we were texting like we were teenagers,” she said.
HandoutLowri said she had used a number of different apps and they “made me feel really bad about myself”.
“It all felt quite superficial with people just going off my appearance,” she said.
“I have never really connected with someone based on appearance.”
Lowri believes the pull of dating apps for many people is because they do not have a lot of confidence deep down, but in reality they hold them back from having conversations in real life.
She said she would encourage anyone who has had negative experiences of using dating apps to “put yourself out there” and meet new people.
“I wish more people would come off these apps and realise that you can just talk to people,” she said.
Lowri said some of her friends had had positive experiences, while others “can’t stand dating apps”.
‘Ethics of algorithmic love’
Lowri’s story is among those featured in new BBC Three documentary Dating Apps: The Inside Story.
The documentary spoke to insiders who worked at Tinder, Hinge and OK Cupid – all owned by US dating giant Match Group – over a ten-year period.
The filmmakers heard from people who described being underfunded to deal with serious allegations such as rape and sexual assault.
Others claimed the company’s PR about safety was not always followed up behind the scenes.
Match Group said safety was a top priority and it had invested heavily in new safety features. It emphasised reports of sexual assault were taken very seriously and allegations made by former employees did not reflect how their safety operations now worked.
The documentary also looks at how dating apps have become a big business over the past decade and asks questions about the ethics of algorithmic love.
Anonymous industry insiders and experts are among those sharing their thoughts in the programme, which is available on iPlayer.
Figures from Ofcom released in November 2024 showed a decline in the number of young people using dating apps, with the top 10 apps in the UK seeing a fall of nearly 16%.
Tinder lost 594,000 users, with Hinge dropping by 131,000, Bumble by 368,000 and Grindr by 11,000, the report said.
In its 2024 Online Nation report, Ofcom said: “Some analysts speculate that for younger people, particularly Gen Z, the novelty of dating apps is wearing off.”
