That was the case for Marilyn Espitia, a 31-yearold freelance photo editor and photographer in California who first ventured into online dating in college, when she met her former partner and now father of her child on OkCupid.
Today she is single, and has been for about three years. While she’s still a “hopeless romantic” who plans to keep using these platforms — primarily Hinge — Espitia says she’ll get off an app or pause her profile when it becomes a little too much.
“It starts getting overwhelming,” Espitia said.
Licensed clinical psychologist Yasmine Saad says that about 3 out of every 4 people she works with use dating apps, and anywhere between 80 to 90% have expressed feeling similar fatigue or burnout as Espitia at some point.
That’s due in part because success is never promised with online dating, regardless of whether you’re looking for a lifelong partner or casual fling.
“It’s a very difficult process for people because you invest a lot, then you receive little,” said Saad, founder and CEO of Madison Park Psychological Services in New York. “It triggers a lot of hopelessness and a lot of self-esteem issues.”
Kathryn Coduto, an assistant professor of media science at Boston University who has been studying online dating since 2016, says dating app burnout is probably as old as the apps themselves, noting that people had experienced fatigue with earlier desktopdominant platforms like eHarmony or Match. com as well.
But these days, burnout may be intensified by the fact there’s an app for just about every part of our daily lives, and that constant connectivity can be too much. Pandemic-era “Zoom fatigue” has spilled over into other areas of tech consumption, Coduto said, and online dating isn’t immune.
That doesn’t mean dating apps are going away anytime soon. Research shows usage has remained relatively stable over recent years.
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