Trapped by the swipe? Dating apps are designed to keep singles 'swiping and spending' rather than finding 'The One', experts warn

If you're spending too much time and money on dating apps, you may be 'seduced' and 'trapped' into an endless loop of swiping, experts have warned. 

A new BBC Three documentary explores how love lives have been transformed by the rise of app-based dating in the past decade. 

In 'Dating Apps: The Inside Story', users of Tinder, Hinge and OKCupid admit to addictive behaviours in a desperate quest to find 'the one'. 

People interviewed by the BBC liken swiping to an addictive game like 'bingo' or a 'slot machine', but with no endpoint like a 'hamster in a wheel'. 

Meanwhile, other singletons reveal the 'instant dopamine hit' of getting hundreds of matches which improved their mood and kept them coming back. 

The firm behind the top platforms aims to keep singletons swiping and spending money on paid features for a constant stream of revenue, the documentary alleges. 

Lee Mackinnon, media and technology researcher at the University of the Arts London, says dating apps leave users in a 'constant state of hunger'. 

'[There's] this kind of reward system where you're getting positive feedback through likes, hits, swipes, so you just continue to go online,' she said. 

Tinder, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, OKCupid and more are all owned by a single conglomerate called Match Group which has annual revenues around $3.5 billion. 

Tinder was first released in September 2012 for several college campuses in the US and quickly expanded, leading to a UK launch in 2013. 

It was the first to use the famous swipe right and left capability, although the very first iteration had heart and X buttons for users to indicate if they were interested in someone. 

Co-founder Jonathan Badeen had the 'epiphany' to let users swipe at the screen as if a pack of cards – and the amount of time users spent on the app started to skyrocket.

'We knew for people to match, to meet the right person, they needed to go through a lot of people,' Badeen said.

'We were trying to make that card stack feel like random rewards in there in order to keep them swiping until they were hopefully able to get that match.' 

Badeen admitted he took inspiration from B.F. Skinner's classic psychological experiments in the 1940s involving pigeons.

Skinner conditioned hungry pigeons to believe that food randomly delivered into a tray was prompted by pecking, turning them into 'gambling fanatics'. 

'These variable rewards are how you can better motivate a person to do something,' Badeen said. 'In Tinder, we were cognizant of that idea.' 

Karim Valera, Android manager at Tinder between 2013 and 2014, said engineers 'really tried to celebrate that moment' of getting a match to make it a form of positive reinforcement. 

He said: 'The whole thing is like a slot machine – you're presented recommendations one after the other, you don't know exactly what you're going to get, you might get a hot person, you might get an ugly person, and if you like them you might get rewarded.' 

One singleton interviewed said: 'It kind of does feel like a game because when you get a match you feel like you win, and if they don't match you back it feels like you lose.' 

Another said: 'For a lot of girls especially it's like validation – so I feel like it feels like a game of who likes me.' 

In 2015, Tinder introduced its 'Plus' subscription tier, which included several features for a monthly fee, such as undo swipes and unlimited likes. 

Meanwhile, those who didn't pay the fee were given only a limited number of swipes per day to create a sense of scarcity and 'keep people coming back'. 

'Scarcity rewards are creating a kind of reward system where you keep the subject hungry in order to have more control of their behaviour,' Mackinnon said. 

Today, Tinder Plus starts at £8.33 per month for a 12-month subscription, while its top tier, Tinder Platinum, starts from £16.67 per month for a 12-month subscription. 

The documentary also shows how sexual predators and scammers have used dating apps to target victims – although Match Group claims to be working against this. 

In response to the documentary, the company said the idea the company's apps are built to be addictive is 'simply inaccurate'.

Its algorithms are 'designed to prioritise active users and mutual compatibility, not to keep people stuck in an endless loop', it said. 

'Dating Apps: The Inside Story' airs at 9pm tonight (Monday) on BBC Three and is available on BBC iPlayer