Is Tinder really creating a ‘dating apocalypse’?

The app became embroiled in a Twitter storm last week after a reporter accused it of being a forum for casual sex. So is Tinder really destroying romance? We asked two young people who have used it for their views

According to Nancy Jo Sales's pri(C)cis of Tinder in Vanity Fair this month, the online app prompts easy access to instant hook-ups and has created a generation of sex-obsessed commitment-phobes. "You're always prowling, you can swipe a couple hundred people a day," says a "handsome twentysomething man" she interviewed. The controversial article even made it onto Newsnight last week, when presenter Evan Davis asked a psychologist whether women were "disadvantaged" because of the hit-it-and-quit-it culture Tinder has allegedly invented. Is Sales's account brutal, or brutally honest? According to my male mates, yes, most men go on Tinder just to hook up. As Andrew shrugged: "Finding a girlfriend on Tinder is like trying to find one in Ibiza." But, if we're being brutally honest, it's not just men exploiting the app for their sexual gain. I think the idea that women are at any disadvantage is entirely patronising. Though most of my single, female friends use Tinder in the hope of meeting "a nice guy who won't just send me pictures of lubricant," I know several who are on it purely for casual dates, and some simply for casual sex. Every bloke I know on Tinder has had at least one proposition from a girl he's "matched" with on the app before they've even swapped phone numbers.