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Editor’s Note: All opinion section content reflects the views of the individual author only and does not represent a stance taken by The Collegian or its editorial board.

To view other humans as a means to an end, essentially, is rather scary, especially when that’s the expectation for many college relationships nowadays

On my 18th birthday, I downloaded Tinder in my dorm room, created a neon pink profile with all the excitement of a kid in a candy shop and got to swiping. And at around 10 p.m. on my 20th birthday, I stared myself in the face in the dirty mirror of a bar bathroom and swore to whatever powers that be that I would never download Tinder again. True story. There are witnesses, unfortunately, to both.

I’m willing to bet that most of us who have been single at any point in our college careers have had a moment like this. Maybe it’s not hooking up with people we meet at parties. Maybe it’s not hooking up with anyone, period.

But in the age of internet-fueled hookup culture, how realistic are these promises? Is it possible to be a romantic when, arguably, romance within our society is waning? On the macro level, this point of view is quite bleak. But within the collegiate ecosystem, at least, I’m willing to die on this hill.

“ Beyond dating apps, however, we tend to treat people the same as if we were swiping but in real life.”

Dating apps are largely to blame for this phenomenon, especially on college campuses, where many dating apps, such as Tinder and Bumble, actively advertise to a closed-off community full of brand-new adults with an insatiable craving for a good time. I once got a free coffee for showing a screenshot of my Bumble profile.

The mechanism of these one-size-fits-all apps has, in the opinion of this author, created a disconnect in the brain’s need for human connection. We can pluck a stranger out of thin air with incredibly selective – and not necessarily true – information to match our criteria for a life partner, and we don’t process that they exist beyond the pixels under our fingertips. Continue reading « Maybe, like in my case, it’s swearing off dating apps »