Dating sites and apps: how they work, what the research says, and how to do better on them

You wrote a profile you were half-proud of, chose the photos, and started swiping. A few weeks in, one of two things has happened. Either your inbox is full of messages that say “hey” and you cannot face opening another one, or you have sent forty careful messages and heard back from three, one of whom vanished after two days. Either way, you may be starting to wonder whether something is wrong with you. Almost certainly it is not. It is the way these sites work, and once you understand that, you can use them far better.

This page explains how dating sites and apps actually work, what the research says about them, and then, in some detail, the part that matters most: how to make contact, what to say, how many people to contact, how the experience differs for men and women and what each can do about it, and what to do when it is not working. It sits beside two other guides here: dating at your own pace, on the dates themselves, and the comparison of apps and other ways to meet people. It is written for adults of any gender or orientation; where the research is about heterosexual dating, which most of it is, it says so.

How dating sites and apps actually work

Under the different designs, most apps do the same few things. They show you profiles; you signal interest, by swiping, liking or sending a message; where interest is mutual you can talk; and the app decides which profiles you see and who sees yours. That last part is the one people underestimate.

• Who you are shown, and who sees you, is decided by a recommendation system. The details are commercial secrets and change often, but the broad logic is public: the app learns from what you and others do. Profiles that attract likes are shown more; profiles that are ignored are shown less; being active and replying keeps you visible, and going quiet buries you. An old or neglected profile is not seen by many people, whatever it says.
• The apps earn when you keep using them. Most make their money from subscriptions and paid extras: seeing who liked you, being shown to more people for an hour, unlimited swiping. That business depends on people staying, not on people leaving happily in couples. It is worth holding that in mind when a design makes you feel you are always one more swipe from success.
• Swiping was built to be hard to stop. Quick, visual, with an unpredictable reward: now and then a match arrives. The research on it is young and mostly cross-sectional, but users of swipe-based apps do report more distress and low mood than non-users, and the design is a plausible part of why. Holtzhausen and colleagues, 2020; Castro and Barrada, 2020.
• The numbers narrow fast. For most people, out of many profiles seen, a few become matches; of matches, a fraction become conversations; of conversations, a fraction become dates. This is normal, not a verdict. Knowing the shape of the funnel tells you where to put your effort, which the section on what to do when it is not working comes back to.
• On most apps for straight dating there are more men than women, and men say yes far more often. On Tinder, researchers found that women accumulated matches quickly while men gathered them slowly, because men swiped right on far more profiles. Tyson and colleagues, 2016. The result is two very different experiences of the same app, which the section on men and women takes up.
• Matching questionnaires and compatibility scores are weaker than they look. When researchers fed more than a hundred traits and preferences into a machine-learning model, it could predict how choosy a person was and how much they were liked in general, but not at all who would like whom after meeting. Joel, Eastwick and Finkel, 2017. A high match percentage means you answered some questions similarly. Chemistry is found in person.

What the research says

It is easy to be cynical about online dating and easy to be sold on it. The evidence supports neither.

• It works, for a great many people. Meeting online is now the most common way straight couples in the US meet, having overtaken friends around 2013. Rosenfeld and colleagues, 2019. About one in ten partnered adults met their partner on a site or app, and more than half of users describe their experience as positive. Pew, 2023; Pew, 2020. Marriages that began online were, in one large study, slightly less likely to end and slightly happier than those that began offline, though that study was funded by a dating company. Cacioppo and colleagues, 2013.
• It is also wearing. People who had used the apps in the past year were more likely to say the experience left them frustrated than hopeful. Pew, 2020.
• Too much choice makes people worse at choosing. In speed-dating studies, the more options people had, the more they judged on what is quickly visible, height and weight rather than warmth or values, and the more variety there was, the more people chose nobody at all. Lenton and Francesconi, 2010 and 2011. A screen of two hundred faces does exactly this to you.
• Almost everyone aims a little high, and replies fall off a cliff. On a large free site, both men and women contacted people about a quarter more desirable than themselves, as the site’s own users rated desirability. The chance of a reply fell sharply as the gap widened, and people wrote longer, more careful messages to the people least likely to answer. Bruch and Newman, 2018.
• Small lies are the norm; big ones backfire. Nearly everyone shades their profile a little, men on height, women on weight, and photographs are the least accurate part of all. Toma, Hancock and Ellison, 2008. Seven in ten users believe lying to look better is very common. Pew, 2020. The lies that cost people are the ones that are discovered at the first meeting.
• Browsing turns people into shoppers. Reviewers of the field concluded that scrolling through profiles encourages an assessing, comparing mindset that is bad for warmth, and that the sensible use of the sites is to find promising people and meet them soon. Finkel and colleagues, 2012.
• Being ignored and strung along hurts. People who had been ghosted or, especially, kept dangling with occasional messages reported less satisfaction with life and more loneliness and helplessness. Navarro and colleagues, 2020. Neither is a reflection on you; both are what the medium makes easy.

How communication on dating sites goes wrong

Everything above is the weather. This is the part you can steer. Communication on a dating site strips out almost everything we normally rely on: no face, no voice, no shared room, and a reader who is comparing you with twenty other conversations. Most of what goes wrong follows from that.

• The empty opener. “Hey.” “Hi, how are you?” “You’re gorgeous.” These give the other person nothing to answer except “fine” or “thanks”, and in a full inbox they are deleted unread. Compliments on appearance alone are the most ignored opener of all; they are what everyone else sent.
• The copy-and-paste. A paragraph that could have gone to anyone reads as if it did. People can tell within a line.
• The interview. Question after question, with nothing offered back. It feels like being assessed, and it leaves the other person doing all the work.
• The essay. Five paragraphs to a stranger about your life, your ex and your views on love. Warmth is good; weight is not. The research finding that people write their longest messages to those least likely to reply is a small tragedy of effort.
• Reading silence as a verdict. No reply for a day becomes “they’ve lost interest”, which becomes a second message, then a third. On the other side, silence usually means nothing more than a full inbox, a busy week or a conversation that ran out of steam. One gentle follow-up is reasonable; after that, let it go.
• Talking for weeks and never meeting. Long text conversations build a picture of a person that is mostly your own invention, and the real person then has to compete with it. People who texted for a month often meet and feel oddly let down by someone perfectly nice.
• Hiding what you want. Not saying whether you are hoping for a relationship or something lighter, for fear of putting someone off, wastes both people’s time and ends in hurt that was avoidable.
• Tone that travels badly. Dry humour reads as rudeness; a short reply reads as coldness; a joke lands as an insult. Text has no face.
• Over-disclosure too early. Trauma, diagnoses and the ex on day two can feel like intimacy and land as pressure. There is a time for these conversations, and it is after some trust has been built, in a voice or in person.
• Pushing after a no. Most women under 35 have been contacted again after saying they were not interested, and most have been sent explicit images they did not ask for. Pew, 2020. A no, a non-reply or an unmatch is an answer. Anything after it is harassment, whatever the intent.
• The reassurance loop. Sending screenshots to friends to decode every message, re-reading your own messages for mistakes, checking whether they have been online. Anxiety does this, and it makes the whole thing miserable; the dating anxiety guide has more.

Communication is the thread that runs through my own clinical work and writing. The page on communication in psychotherapy and counselling explains how therapy works on these habits.

How to make contact, and what to say

The aim of a first message is small: to be answered. Not to impress, not to win, just to start an exchange. That is easier than it sounds once you stop trying to do the other things.

1. Pick one specific thing from their profile. A photo, a line, a place, a book, a pet. Something that shows you looked and that gives them something to say. “You’ve been to Lisbon twice, I see. What keeps pulling you back?” beats any compliment.
2. Add a little of yourself. One clause, not a paragraph. “I went for a weekend and came back with a suitcase of tinned fish.” Now there are two people in the conversation.
3. Ask one easy question. Open, light, answerable in a line. Not “what are you looking for” in the first message; not anything that needs a considered reply at eleven at night.
4. Keep it to two to four sentences. Long enough to be personal, short enough to answer on a bus.
5. Mind the tone. Warm beats clever. If a joke could be misread, it will be. Read it once as a stranger would.
6. Reply within a day or so, and match their length and pace roughly. Not instantly every time, not three days later. Consistency reads as interest; games read as games.
7. Within a few exchanges, say what you are hoping for. “I’m looking for a relationship, though I’m in no hurry” or “I’d like to meet people and see” are both fine. The person who is put off by your honesty has saved you weeks.
8. Move it off the screen soon. After a handful of good exchanges, suggest a short call or video call, then a short meeting in a public place. “I’d rather hear your voice than type. Fancy a ten-minute call this week?” Most people are relieved; the ones who keep finding reasons not to are telling you something.
9. Follow up once, gently, then stop. “No pressure at all, just checking this didn’t get lost.” If there is still nothing, wish them well in your head and move on. Not every silence needs closing.
10. Decline kindly, and briefly. “I’ve enjoyed this but I don’t think we’re a match. Good luck with it all.” It takes ten seconds and spares someone the uncertainty you would hate yourself.

Some words to borrow or change:

More words for dates, messages and the thoughts afterwards are in the free communication and appointment prompts.

How many people to contact

More than feels natural, and fewer than the app wants. The research is clear that reply rates are low for everyone and lowest when you aim far above your own league as the site measures it. Bruch and Newman, 2018. So a message that goes unanswered is the normal outcome, not a judgement, and the people who do well treat first messages as a numbers game played with care: a steady number of genuinely personal messages to people who seem a realistic fit, rather than a hundred copies of “hey” or one perfect essay a week.

A workable rhythm for most people is a fixed amount of time, two or three sessions a week of twenty minutes or so, in which you look properly at a handful of profiles and write to the ones you would actually like to meet, then close the app. That keeps you visible to the recommendation system, keeps the messages personal, and keeps the whole thing from eating your evenings. Within that, aim a little wide. The person who is a nine in your head and a six in the app’s eyes is often the one who answers. If you are getting matches but no conversations, send more first messages yourself; if you are getting conversations but no dates, send fewer messages and suggest meeting sooner.

Men and women: two different apps

Most of the research is about straight dating, and it describes two experiences so different that men and women often struggle to believe each other’s accounts. Neither is better. Both are hard in their own way.

What it is usually like for men. Few matches, slowly. More than half of men who had dated online said they did not get enough messages; a quarter of women said the same. Pew, 2020. Men swipe right on far more profiles, which floods women and leaves men with a scarcity that can feel personal and is largely structural. Tyson and colleagues, 2016. The temptation is to lower effort and raise volume: swipe everyone, copy one message to all. It makes the problem worse, because the recommendation system reads indiscriminate swiping as low-quality activity and women read copied messages as the hundredth of the day. The researchers who studied Tinder put it plainly: a little effort on the profile, especially for men, goes a long way.

What it is usually like for women. Too many messages, most of them empty, some of them unpleasant. Women were five times as likely as men to say they got too many messages, and most women under 35 had been contacted again after saying no or sent explicit images they had not asked for. Pew, 2020. Women were also more likely to say it was hard to find people they were attracted to. The temptation is to stop initiating altogether and filter by appearance, because that is all there is time for. It leaves good matches unseen and hands the first move to the people most willing to send a hundred messages.

Everyone else. Gay men’s apps have their own economy, often faster and more explicit, with the same core advice: say what you want, meet soon, keep yourself safe. Lesbian, bisexual, trans and non-binary people often use both general and specialist apps; the comparison lists some, and the dating guide covers privacy where being open could be a risk. LGB users report more harassment than straight users. Pew, 2020.

Raising your chances

Some of this applies to everyone; some of it is different for men and for women, because the problems are different.

For everyone:

• Photos first, because they are what is judged first. A clear, recent, well-lit photo of your face, smiling and looking at the camera, as the first picture. Then variety: one full-length, one doing something you love, one with other people where you are obviously the one who matters. No sunglasses in every shot, no group photo first, no photo from eight years ago. Ask a friend of the gender you want to attract to choose; people are poor judges of their own pictures, and photographs are where profiles are least honest. Toma, Hancock and Ellison, 2008.
• Write for a reply, not a résumé. Specific beats impressive: “I make a dangerously good lasagne and a terrible pun” gives someone something to say; “I love travel, food and laughing” does not. Say what you are like to be around, and one or two things you would like to do with someone. Leave out the list of demands and the warnings about time-wasters; they read as bitterness.
• Be honest about the things that will be discovered. Age, height, children, what you want. Small vanity is universal and forgiven; the first date is where the big lies die.
• Stay active, in short bursts. The app shows people who use it. Twenty minutes a few times a week, with replies, keeps you visible without taking over your life.
• Meet sooner than feels comfortable. A short call within a week of good conversation, a short public meeting within two or three. The research on choice and on long text courtships points the same way: the screen is for finding people; the knowing happens in person. Finkel and colleagues, 2012.
• Choose the app for the aim. If you want a relationship, use an app where people write and say so, and read what they say. If you want something lighter, say so and use an app where that is the norm. The comparison sets out the differences.

If you are a man finding it hard to get matches or replies:

• Fix the photos before anything else. This is where most men lose, and it is the most fixable thing on this page. A friend’s honest choice, daylight, a real smile, one photo doing something, none in the bathroom mirror.
• Swipe selectively. Indiscriminate liking lowers your standing with the recommendation system and raises your frustration. Like the people you would actually meet.
• Write a real profile, and real messages. Yours will be read against hundreds of empty ones; two sentences that show you read her profile put you ahead of most of the field.
• Expect low reply rates and do not take them personally. The maths is against everyone. Send steady, personal messages to realistic matches and let the rest go without a second message.
• Never send what you were not asked for, and stop when told no. It should not need saying, and the survey figures show that it does. It is also the quickest way to a ban.
• Build a life the profile can describe. The men who do best on the apps are the ones for whom the apps are one strand of a social life, not the whole of it. Building a social life is about that.

If you are a woman drowning in messages or disappointed by them:

• Initiate. Sending the first message to men you have chosen changes the pool entirely: you are talking to someone you picked, not someone who picked everyone. Some apps are built around women moving first; on the others nothing stops you.
• Filter by effort, not only by looks. A message that shows someone read your profile tells you more about how they will treat you than their third photo does.
• Move to a call early. Ten minutes of voice tells you more than two weeks of text and costs far less. Anyone who will not do it has answered a question for you.
• Say what you want without apology. “Looking for a relationship” in the profile cuts the noise. The people it deters were going to waste your time.
• Use the tools: block, report, unmatch, hide your distance, and do not explain yourself to anyone who has ignored a no. Most apps now let you report unsolicited images in one tap.
• Protect your evenings. A full inbox is not an obligation. Answer the messages that interest you and let the rest sit; nobody is owed a reply.

When it is not working

The useful question is not “what is wrong with me” but “where does it stop”. Apps have a funnel, and each stage that fails has its own likely causes.

• Few or no matches. Almost always the photos, sometimes the profile text or the app. Change the pictures first, then the text, then try a different app for a month.
• Matches but no conversations. Your openers, or theirs. Send more first messages yourself, make them specific, and give people a question they can answer.
• Conversations that fade. Too long on the screen. Suggest a call or a coffee earlier. If people fade when you suggest meeting, look at whether you are saying what you want, or whether you are talking to people who want something else.
• Dates that go nowhere. This is rarely about the app. It may be about expectations (first dates are mostly pleasant and mostly not the one), about pace, about what you are choosing, or about things anxiety is doing on the date; the dating guide and the dating anxiety guide are for this stage.
• It all works and you still feel terrible. Take a break. The apps are tiring by design, and a month off with the profile paused costs you nothing. Meet people the old ways in the meantime: through friends, activities and groups, which the comparison covers, and which bring people you would never have swiped on.

If you notice that rejection on the apps is hitting you far harder than it should, that you cannot stop checking, that every match sets off doubt about whether you really want them, or that anxiety is stopping you getting past the first message, those are worth taking to a therapist rather than fighting alone. Persistent doubt of that kind can be relationship OCD; the way you reach out or pull back under uncertainty often follows an attachment pattern that can be understood and changed; and social anxiety is one of the commonest reasons people stall at the messaging stage. Therapy also helps with the plain demoralisation of a long search. If you would like to work on this with me, I offer therapy in Dublin 2 and by video call across Ireland, where that is suitable.

Staying safe, and keeping your money

Most of the safety advice for meeting someone is in the dating guide: a public place, your own way home, a friend who knows where you are, no obligation created by anyone paying for anything. Two things belong here because they happen on the sites themselves.

• Romance fraud. Someone attractive, often working abroad or at sea, who moves fast to intense affection, wants to leave the app for a messaging service straight away, always has a reason not to meet or video call, and then, weeks later, has a crisis that needs money: a medical bill, a customs charge, a plane ticket, an investment that cannot miss. Never send money, gift cards or cryptocurrency to someone you have not met in person, however long you have talked, and be suspicious of anyone who will not do a live video call. Reverse-search their photos. If you have sent money, tell your bank immediately and report it to the police; you are not foolish, these people are professionals. FraudSMART.
• Your privacy. Keep your surname, workplace and home area out of your profile and early messages. Use the app’s messaging until you have met. Hide your distance if the app lets you. Be careful with images you would not want shared.

Talking to someone

It can be very helpful to talk to someone. Dating sites are a strangely private form of public life; people tell nobody about the forty unanswered messages or the inbox they cannot face, and so they conclude that the problem is theirs. Saying it out loud to a friend, or to a therapist, usually reveals that everyone finds it hard, and it makes the next message easier to send. A few ways to begin:

If anyone on a site is treating you badly, they are not owed a conversation about it; block and report them, and tell someone you trust.

If you need help now

If you are in immediate danger, or cannot keep yourself safe, contact your local emergency services straight away. Ireland 112 or 999; UK 999 or 112; rest of the EU 112; US and Canada 911; Australia 000; New Zealand 111; elsewhere, your local emergency number.

Someone to listen, day or night: Samaritans 116 123 (Ireland, UK); text HELLO to 50808 (Ireland); call or text 988 (US, Canada); Lifeline 13 11 14 (Australia); call or text 1737 (New Zealand); elsewhere, findahelpline.com lists free helplines.

Sources

• Rosenfeld, Thomas and Hausen (2019): how online dating displaces other ways of meeting
• Cacioppo and colleagues (2013): marital satisfaction and break-ups across online and offline meeting venues
• Finkel and colleagues (2012): online dating, a critical analysis from the perspective of psychological science
• Joel, Eastwick and Finkel (2017): is romantic desire predictable?
• Bruch and Newman (2018): aspirational pursuit of mates in online dating markets
• Tyson and colleagues (2016): a first look at user activity on Tinder
• Lenton and Francesconi (2010, 2011): how humans manage an abundance of mate options
• Toma, Hancock and Ellison (2008): deceptive self-presentation in online dating profiles
• Holtzhausen and colleagues (2020): swipe-based dating apps and mental health
• Navarro and colleagues (2020): psychological correlates of ghosting and breadcrumbing
• Castro and Barrada (2020): dating apps and their psychosocial correlates, a systematic review
• Pew Research Center (2020): the virtues and downsides of online dating
• Pew Research Center (2023): key findings about online dating in the US
• FraudSMART (Banking and Payments Federation Ireland): romance scams