The causal effects of online dating apps evidence from u. s. colleges by berkeren buyukeren alexey


The Causal Effects of Online Dating Apps: Evidence From U. S. Colleges
Keywords: Online platforms, dating market, Tinder, health, mobile technology
The Causal Effects of Online Dating Apps: Evidence From U.S. Colleges
Online dating apps have revolutionized the dating market over the past decade, yet their broader effects remain unclear. We analyze the impact of the early diffusion of the leading dating app -- Tinder -- across U.S. colleges on dating behavior, relationships, and health. For identification, we rely on the ample evidence that Tinder's early promotion strategy focused primarily on Greek organizations on college campuses. Using a comprehensive survey of college students containing more than 1.1 million responses around the year of Tinder's rollout, we estimate a difference-in-differences model comparing student outcomes before and after Tinder's rollout and across individuals with varying Greek organization membership. We find that the introduction of Tinder led to a sharp and persistent increase in reported dating and sexual activity. It had no impact on the probability of being in a relationship or having relationship problems and, on average, caused a relative improvement in student mental health. However, it also increased the frequency of reported instances of sexual assault and sexually transmitted diseases. Accordingly, these effects have downstream impacts on self-reported academic performances. A complementary identification strategy relying on across-college comparisons confirms that the above estimates are not driven by spillovers on non-Greek students. Overall, these findings suggest that, by dramatically reducing search costs, online dating apps altered dating-market equilibria toward higher turnover in romantic couplings and greater prevalence of casual sex.
Keywords: Online platforms, dating market, Tinder, health, mobile technology
JEL Classification: D91, I12, I23, J10, L82, L86
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation 
Buyukeren, Berkeren and Makarin, Alexey and Xiong, Heyu, The Causal Effects of Online Dating Apps: Evidence From U.S. Colleges (October 6, 2022). MIT Sloan Research Paper No. 6833-22, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4240140 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4240140
Berkeren Buyukeren
Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF) ( email )
Via Due Macelli, 73
Rome, 00187
Italy