Tinder and Cognitive Overload
The online dating industry is one of the world’s newest billion dollar industies. More people are using dating websites and apps now, more than ever before. And Tinder is at the forefront of this movement. In fact, recent studies suggest that 1/3 rd of all marriages in the United States started on dating apps or websites. This trend is only expected to increase in the coming years as Tinder is spreading like wildfire even in developing nations like India.
The question, however, is whether this is a good thing for society. Historically, human beings never had access to so much of anything. They had limited resources, food and even the prospects of finding the ideal partner were very weak. Thousands of years ago, a man or a woman living in a cave in some remote part of the world would only have access to a finite number of people. He or she would probably meet and mingle with a very small number of individuals during the course of their lifetime. And finding a potential partner would have been extremely hard as they only had limited options. What Tinder has done is that it has brought a million people to the fingertips of these men and women who are not used to it in evolutionary terms. This explosion of possibilities has created something psychologists refer to as Cognitive Overload.
Traditionally, this was a term used in the realm of education but now frequently used in social media research. The Tinder scenario is similar to an experiment where a scientist went into a grocery store and put out jars of jams for people to try out and buy. At first, he put three jars and people, more often than not, ended up buying one of them. Later, he put up 70 jars and waited to see how people would react. To his surprise, nobody tried the jam and nobody purchased even a single jar. This is because our brain did not have these many alternatives for millions of years which is completely reflected in the modern dating world.
Tinder is also addictive. Constant right and left swipes have shown to activate addiction centres in the brian, gamifying the whole experience. Our brain starts to believe that there is a better alternative to the previous one. This thought once seeded in our minds could affect our personal relationships.
All this being said, the basic wiring of our brain with regard to romantic love has always stayed the same. Even though the caves have become coffee shops and the tree tops have become park benches, we have stayed the same, hopefully for a little longer.
