Deciding whether or not a dating app is worth your time, your emotions, and your money is an important question. The challenge with answering this question, though, is it’s tough to get a straight answer. Today, we’re going to give you a definitive answer, and give you our brutally honest take on whether dating apps are a waste of time.

Here’s the reality about dating apps.

The answer to this question is that it depends on several factors that may be different for different people. Period. There are some situations where a dating app will be a complete waste of time, and there are some situations where a dating app has the potential to be the greatest thing ever for your search for love.

If anyone tries to give you a strict yes or no answer across the board to this question, respectfully, they don’t know what they’re talking about.

That may sound harsh, but there’s a temptation to overgeneralize answers or assume that because it worked for you, it’s great for everyone else, or because it didn’t work for you, it’s terrible for everyone else.

If you want some clarity, don’t worry! We’re going to walk you through what you should be looking at to answer this question.

The details of your situation matter most.

What you’re looking for and where you’re at in your life are the first stop in answering this question. Here are a list of statements and qualifiers you should read through to help make sure you’re ready for dating apps, because here’s the spoiler.

If you aren’t ready, the greatest dating app on the planet with the greatest matches still won’t be a good fit for you.

• If you are still dealing with a past relationship or emotions that might make you unavailable to a potential match, dating apps won’t be worth it for you (yet).
• If you don’t have defined relationship goals, you probably aren’t ready to start dating online yet.
• If you don’t have time to commit to the process (creating a profile, searching for matches, sending messages, going on dates, etc.), dating apps won’t be worth it for you.

The quality of the dating app you’re choosing is important.

All dating apps are not the same when it comes to quality, goals, and results. Even if dating apps are a worthwhile fit for you, choosing the wrong app can give you a terrible experience. Quality dating apps care about your safety, your experience, the matches you get, and all the little details that can make or break the experience.

Here’s the bottom line. Crummy dating apps will NEVER be worth it. Great dating apps CAN be worth it, as long as the other conditions we share on this page are met.

You have got to make sure that if you plan to try online dating apps that you take the time to research and find the app that fits your goals, cares about quality, and has a track record to back it all up.

For Christian Singles

If you happen to be a Christian single, we’d love to share an incredible recommendation for finding faith-focused love. It’s called Higher Bond, and it’s a newer dating app that focuses heavily on safety, providing a great experience, and helping you meet someone who shares the same faith and values as you do.

If you haven’t tried it yet, we highly recommend giving Higher Bond a try through the link below!

Clearly, dating apps are working (at a bare minimum) for millions of people.

Now, the real crux of whether dating apps are worth it is whether or not they are producing results. If no one is finding love on these apps, they’re totally worthless. If people are having success meeting people and falling in love, they’re clearly worth it.

The data shows that millions and millions of people since the inception of online dating (nearly two and a half decades ago) have met, fallen in love, and gotten married using the technology.

According to a recent Forbes study, nearly 45% of people in a relationship in the U.S. met through an online dating app. There are some other studies that show the number a little lower, but still as a substantial percentage.

Honestly, this should be the mic drop moment on this discussion. If almost half of people are having success meeting someone online, then it clearly is worth it. Even if this number were 25% or even 10%, wouldn’t those be good enough odds to try for something that could prove to be so meaningful?

The way you define success is imperative to whether dating apps end up being a waste of time for you.

There is a need for an important disclaimer here to really round out our answer to whether dating apps are worth it or not. It’s imperative that you have realistic expectations of what to expect and a proper definition of what success is, or else you’re setting yourself up for a bad time.

For many people, if they don’t meet their person through online dating after a certain period of time, they say that it was a waste of time. Yes, meeting someone is the ultimate goal, but just because you don’t achieve that, doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth it.

Here’s an analogy and then we’ll explain why this is true for dating apps. Let’s say you plan to go on a particular diet to lose 50 lbs. by a certain upcoming holiday. You do the diet, and you end up only losing 40 lbs.

Now, you could say that the diet was a waste of time because you didn’t hit your end goal. However, in the process, you got healthier, improved your mental well-being, made some new friends at the gym, and you still lost 40 lbs.! In reality, even though you didn’t hit your final goal, the journey still positively impacted your life.

Online dating apps can certainly be the same. Even if you don’t meet your special someone, you stand a good chance of learning more about yourself, meeting some interesting people, and probably having some fun. And sometimes, even just the chance to find love is worth it, even without the extra benefits.

For example, if there was a free raffle where you had a 5% chance of winning tickets to your favorite band’s upcoming concert, and you didn’t win, would you enter again if you had another chance? We’d venture to say most likely yes! The reason is because the risk or output required is worth the potential benefit you have if you’re successful.

The same can be said about online dating apps. The “prize” at the end of it all is an incredible person to spend the rest of your life with. We’d venture to say that if there was even a 5% chance of meeting that person somewhere, you’d say it was worth going there. And knowing that some studies show that 45% of people are meeting someone through a dating app, it certainly seems that with the right mindset and definition of success, it’s totally worth it.

Effort can make or break this question.

The last thing we want to close with is this. The effort that you put into online dating will very directly affect your potential outcome. It doesn’t guarantee results, but it increases your chances.

Better said, if you put in low or no effort, your chance of finding someone special is close to zero. If you put in a lot of effort and really give it your all, your chance of finding someone special is not 100%, but it is much higher than if you did nothing or the bare minimum.

What does effort look like? Here are a few things.

• Taking the time to write a great dating profile.
• Uploading high quality dating photos that really showcase you.
• Sending great messages that show effort and that you actually read their profile.
• Responding to messages and being open to possibilities you may never have considered before.
• Being patient.

If you’re stuck, give it a try.

If you’re still not sure if dating apps are worth it for you, we’d suggest giving them a try. Just make sure you use quality dating apps, put in the effort, and base your opinion of the results on a fair assessment of success.