Bumble tumble Dating apps in crisis in US as singles tire of numbers game

In May, the dating app Bumble, marketed as the feminist Tinder on its launch in 2014, ran what it called an anti-celibacy advertising -campaign.

- Edward Helmore

It featured a woman attempting to "swear off dating" and become a nun - only to find herself lusting after a hunky convent gardener.

The backlash to the "Bumble fumble" was swift. Instagrammer Lainey Molnar said the company was "gaslighting women who refuse to participate in hook-up culture".

"It seems like women's boundaries over our bodily autonomy are so threatening to the entire concept of dating that they need to put up billboards to stop us," she said.

The ads, shown on billboards in the US, came down and the company apologised. But the episode outlined a deeper issue: dating apps are in crisis.

Shares in Bumble crashed 30% this month after a bad earnings report. Dallas-based Match Group, owner of Tinder, Match.​com, OkCupid, Hinge and others, has reported a decline in its number of paying users for seven straight quarters. According to Pew research, nearly half of all online daters and more than half of female daters say their experiences have been negative.

The same study found that 52% of online daters said they had come across someone they thought was trying to scam them, 57% of women said online dating was not too or not at all safe and 85% said someone continued to contact them after they said they weren't interested.