One winter afternoon in Madrid, around twenty singles share lively conversations and knowing smiles around a large table. They are in a “slow dating” club created by a Hispanic-Peruvian woman, tired of failures in the dating apps.
An hour earlier, the ten women and ten men, aged between 25 and 35, looked at each other with apprehension before participating in this session.
This concept of “slow dating” has become popular in several European cities and Eva Sánchez, 28-year-old creative director, wanted to develop it in Madrid after suffering a new disappointment on the internet: a suitor with whom she was chatting disappeared from suddenly and without any explanation.
“My generation wants a healthy relationship, but the applications have created pessimism in love, it is difficult to believe,” Sánchez explains to AFP.
Familiar with the codes of marketing, she promotes her initiative with posters posted in the streets of the Spanish capital asking not to trust dating applications and announcing the name of her Instagram page.
Once a month, the Spanish woman of Peruvian origin organizes a meeting with a different theme and location, with the aim that the participants, who pay 30 euros, do not feel like they are on a date. To break the ice, offer people games and manual activities.
Applications in decline
The British Tom Hopcroft also began organizing dating events in Madrid, through his Instagram page with the provocative name, “Guiri de shit” (“Shit Tourist”), aimed at singles from all over the world who have recently moved to the capital. Spanish or Barcelona. They are always full.
This comes as dating apps have lost ground. Downloads of Tinder, Bumble, Meetic and Grindr have fallen almost 20% since 2020, according to data from Sensor Tower, a digital data analysis agency.
The stock market valuation of Match Group (Tinder, Hinge, Meetic), a leader in online dating, has plummeted from 47 billion euros, its maximum in 2021, after the peak of the pandemic, to 7.7 billion today.
“There is a continuous slowdown in the use of applications,” says Seema Shah of Sensor Tower.
“Generation Z (born in the late 90s) prefers to meet in person rather than online,” he says.
Faced with falling revenues, online dating companies began offering group activities or meet-ups between friends.
Damián, 33, abandoned dating apps after learning about their “dark side,” as he has worked with algorithms as a computer developer. “I decided to meet people in real life, going out and socializing,” although “it’s more difficult,” admits the Franco-Spanish, who participated in an event organized by Eva Sánchez.
“Disenchantment”
There is so much habit of screens, that direct interactions have been lost, says Isabel, a 28-year-old Chilean, who says that for example now it can be “strange or invasive” for men to approach a table that she and her friends share. to propose some plan.
The psychologist Esther Jiménez notes a “disenchantment” among the young patients she receives in her Madrid office.
They go on dates “but without the intention of really connecting with the other person, more like entertainment, which is why a lot of hopelessness is appearing in young people who would like to find someone to share their life with. Self-esteem is affected,” says the couples specialist and sexologist.
“We live in a society in which we are apparently connected 100% of the time and yet the generalized feeling of loneliness is very scary. At the end of the day, we are gregarious beings and we need others, that is why we look for connections,” he continues.
“Slow dating” “is working because it changes the paradigm and people have the opportunity to feel seen and come with their defenses somewhat lower, since you assume that you are going to find other people wanting the same thing as you, connecting with others,” says the psychologist.
In short, Jiménez concludes, “the focus does not have to be so much on the medium we use, but on how we use it. Are we consuming people or looking for connections?”