I personally recommend that people (men especially) stay away from them.

I always struggled with confidence and self-esteem, so for me dating apps were just making that worse. I spent months swiping and the breakdown for me was something like 200 swipes before I’d get a match, then out of those matches, at least half were spam bots or fake profiles, then out of the other half, probably only 1/5 would answer my messages. The ones that did answer either weren’t very engaged or just never responded at all often the initial interaction. All of this just contributed to lower self esteem and more bitterness and depression.

I found the women on these apps would put in 0 effort at conversation, and yet would say things like “We should get to know each other first” when I tried to set up a date.

Then the dates that I did get, I felt catfished but more likely it was my own wishful thinking and being willing to overlook obviously misleading photos. I had at least one date with a girl who matched her picture but then was a complete psycho.

I don’t really blame the women, it’s just market forces at work. These apps tend to have way more guys on them than girls, so the women are (generally) able to just sit back and the men are expected to wow them with fantastic opening messages or have the exact right physical characteristics. For this reason, Bumble was the only app I had success with and would have recommended.

For me, I had hoped dating apps would be a useful tool for meeting other singles in person to get to know them, but I ended up with the impression that many women were just using them to inflate their own self esteem, and loved to chat and get compliments but never actually wanted to date.

Anyways, it sounds cliche and I’m sure someone has said this to you, but you should work on building yourself. What worked for me was to find an activity that I could be secure and confident in and also meet women in that setting. I found two different long-term relationships through coed rec sports, and it’s not like I was some superstar at sports impressing the women or anything. Just go into it thinking about improving your own mental and physical health, work on getting better and meeting more people.

Both women I met through coed sports told me that I was much more appealing in person than my dating profiles, so maybe some profile improvements were warranted, but I concluded that it’s just not possible to get a good sense of someone you might want to date through pictures and a chat. Dating apps are only useful if they lead to meeting people in person, so if they aren’t enabling you to do that then you just have to get out there and meet people without them.