Online dating is hard enough without wondering whether your apps are conspiring against you. When you’re on a dating app, you already know all your potential matches are judging things like your appearance, your job, your writing style, and your age, so knowing that the app itself is doing the same things might be more than a little worrisome.
A recent study came up with findings that seem to point to exactly that.
Using Tinder is usually free.
While you have to connect a Facebook account to the app to make a profile, it doesn’t charge you to create one or to match & message those you match with. On a free account, however, you’re limited to a certain amount of potential matches a day, and you can’t see who’s already liked you. With their paid service, Tinder Plus, you have unlimited swipes and can see everyone’s who’s already swiped on you.
The price of Tinder Plus varies for users, and one study has looked into how exactly that price is determined.
Buzzfeed News reported that the study “did not find statistically significant price differences based on race, gender, or sexual orientation,” but they did find that older users were charged more for the service than younger users. In fact, on average, people aged 30-49 were charged 65% more than those aged 18-29.
So it looks like being older CAN cost you in the dating world.
This isn’t exactly uncharted territory for Tinder Plus.
When Tinder Plus was first launched in 2015, in the US, the service was $9.99 a month for users 29 and under and $19.99 for those 30+. Obviously this was met with a lot of pushback from users, who filed a class-action lawsuit in 2019, which was settled out of court.
The company said they would remove age-based pricing going forward, but it doesn’t look like that’s the case yet.
So if you’re older than 30 and looking for love, Tinder Plus might not be the cheapest way to do it.
But if you’re only just getting close to 30 like I am, it might be time to shell out that extra money for the service while it’s still juuuust a little bit cheaper to do so.
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What do you think? Is Tinder charging more for older users fair, or discrimination? Let us know what you think in the comments!
h/t: Buzzfeed News
