When right swipe goes wrong: Have dating apps become netting apps to dupe girls?

New Delhi: In 2014, a 28-year-old woman in midtown Atlanta in the US woke up at her apartment doorstep with no keys, no clothes, body aches, and blood around her private parts. When the woman went to the hospital, it was found she had been drugged and assaulted by her date from the previous evening. Hartman, who committed the crime was a married father of three and a serial rapist. It was found during the investigation that Hartman had been using a dating app and was running multiple profiles to interact with different women. When one of the victims contacted the dating app, they responded by saying they were unable to find the user’s profile.

Dating apps might be a millennial and GenZ way of approaching romance and might have opened up opportunities to meet more people, but what have they done to our psyche is something that needs attention. The safety provided by these apps to their users, however, remains in question after the recent Shraddha Walkar murder case came to light.

India on 14 November woke up to the gruesome, chilling details of the murder of a young woman named Shraddha Walkar. Sharddha was murdered by her live-in partner who later chopped her body into 35 pieces and scattered them across Delhi over 18 days. The accused Aftab Poonawalla portrayed himself as a feminist, environmentalist, supporter of LGBTQ+ and liberal on social media. He managed to keep the murder under wraps for almost 6 months.

Aftab and the victim Sharddha met on a dating app where love blossomed before the couple decided to move-in together.

Online dating is not new to us. People have been using apps and other social media platforms to engage and build romantic associations for quite a while. However, dating apps like Tinder and Grindr and others that followed have radically changed the landscape of online dating.

According to experts, examining sex in the age of the internet suggests that these apps have grown in response to a culture where people are single for a lot longer, and also where there’s a changing sexual morality that’s open to different kinds of relationships. These apps have hugely altered the way people look at relationships.

One of the users said, “My experience on a dating app has overall been really good, I have met a lot of new people with the same interests, and had good conversations with a few. However, virtual dates as an option should be given by the apps so that one feels comfortable before meeting someone in person.”

Dating apps work on the ‘familiarity’ principle. You list your ‘interests’ while creating a profile and would be more or less directed to profiles that share your interests.

Another user while talking to Firstpost said, “A dating app that I use asks for facial verification. Once verified, your profile will get a blue tick and be considered to be more authentic in comparison to others. The apps don’t ask for any document as proof of your identity.”

Another user of one of the popular dating apps said, “The apps are more or less safe to use. The paid version offers added features that let you view the profiles better. However, the apps don’t guarantee you a hundred percent safety.”

Over the years, users have also taken to social media to talk about their horror stories on dating apps. In early 2019, one of the women had talked about how she was left in the middle of the road at 12 in the night after her date pushed her from the car, as reported by the GQ.

“A user had also shared a story where her date pulled down his zip and flashed at her,” as reported by the GQ.

Meanwhile, these dating apps also suggest to use in-built messengers before moving to other messenger apps. However, the safety of users should be the utmost priority of the app builders so that incidents like Shraddha Walkar’s murder dont repeat in the future.

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