Tinder

Tinder

March 9, 2017

I am just going through some old magazines and looked at a few articles that I had highlighted as interesting for a future read. I came across an article titled ‘tinder fomo’, it was in the April 2016 issue of Cosmopolitan. I re-read the article and once again just shook my head. The whole premise of the article was to reinforce that being on tinder is actually a good thing for people, single or coupled. I have to say I was a little disturbed at this article as it’s reasoning of why it’s a good reason to be on tinder is that it reinforces that you ‘still have it’ and are ‘f*ckable’. The article goes on to say that young people get instant pleasure from the screen or any technology for that matter. So they are basically saying that this generation of young people is using technology to not only get validation but also approval of everything that they do in their lives. This whole article makes me think back to a question that I had asked in an Organizational Behaviour class that I had taken in 2007-ish.

After discussing a lot of topics from employment to generational differences and everything in between. The instructor had said that “We are learning as much as we can about this younger generation”. I was honestly a bit surprised as I would’ve thought that we would want THEM to learn about US and previous generations so that they wouldn’t make the same mistakes that we’ve made. Even back then I was ticked off that these little self-righteous punks wanted us to learn about them…uh, I don’t think so. I’ve stood by that belief since I took the class and as time has gone on (holy 10 years), the researchers are now seeing that this generation of kids is pretty much useless. This previous statement I got from an article on CBC News. I have to say it was gratifying to hear something that I’ve known for quite some time. It just surprises me that it took so many others so long to see this.

Regardless of my opinion, the article that was in Cosmo solidifies that indeed we have a group of young people who get gratification from a screen and other forms of technology. This is a scary thing as it just reinforces that these young people lack self-esteem and confidence that is going to be needed throughout their whole lives if they want to succeed. This lack of social skills leads me to believe that they will be detached their whole lives and not understand what real communication is. They will continue to think that they need this validation and suicides and other mental health issues will be on the rise. There is a whole other conversation here about the strain on our health care system and suicides here but I’m not getting into that.

My point is that in my opinion, being on a dating site (in this case Tinder) is NOT ok when you are in a relationship. If you are committed to the person you are with, you shouldn’t want to go on these sites. It doesn’t matter if you’re not responding to the messages that you get or the likes…maybe these people should look into why they want and need this validation? Are they unhappy? Do they want something more? Do they need a pick me up (self-esteem)? Seriously people, look into the real issue instead of going online and making yourself feel happy/better or whatever the case may be. Once you discover that you may realize that being coupled and on a dating site isn’t a good combination. Seriously, why does this have to be explained to them? How do they NOT know this? Idiots!