Therapy for Tinder addiction. A user was swiping on 500 girls a day. "I lost all sense of self"
A British man claims he had to undergo treatment for Tinder addiction after swiping on 500 profiles a day.
27-year-old Ed Turner confessed to obsessively using the popular dating app solely for the adrenaline rush he felt when girls "liked" his profile, with no intention of actually meeting any of them or finding a girlfriend.
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"If someone didn't respond or didn't send me a message, it would crush me", Turner told the British publication iNews, quoted by NYPost. "I had moments of euphoria when I got a lot of matches with people I found attractive, but it was always followed by a crash because the feeling wasn't sustainable".
"The validation from others was the only thing that kept me going", he added candidly.
Infatuated with Tinder, Turner also downloaded the dating apps Hinge and Bumble, swiping through all the profiles he could find.
The Briton said he only matched with "about 5%" of women and an even smaller percentage actually started a conversation with him.
Ed Turner, 27 years old, had no intention of using the dating app to meet women or get a girlfriend, stating that he just wanted members of the opposite sex to like his profile for validation.
Even so, Turner regularly spoke with 10 women at the same time and spent his days waiting for the women to respond.
"Since I swiped right on everyone and was completely immersed in the 'game', I lost all sense of self", he admitted painfully. "Dating apps have turned sex, communication and love into a real game and distorted reality".
Without any real intention of meeting any of his partners, some conversations quickly faded, making the young man feel depressed.
"These apps affected my entire mood and personality", Turner said.
"I could never figure out what I was really looking for", he said. "I reached the point where I was like, 'Okay, I have to ask this person out on a date or she won't talk to me anymore'".
"I knew that eventually, I would have to talk to people about a real date. When it came to that point, I was almost disinterested".
Turner eventually entered into a relationship with a woman he met offline, but he couldn't stop thinking about the apps.
"It made me feel like a lousy partner. I didn't do anything and I never talked to women while I was in that relationship, but it had an effect on me", he said. "That euphoria was gone".
After the end of that relationship, Turner turned to Tinder again.
He sought therapy, where he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and depression.
And although he gave up the apps, the bachelor struggles not to use them again, suppressing an insatiable need to start swiping again.
Turner is far from alone in his addiction to dating apps.
Match Group, the parent company of Tinder and Hinge, is currently facing a class-action lawsuit by disgruntled users who claim the apps are designed to trap them in an endless loop of swiping instead of helping them find a relationship.
Plaintiffs argue that Match's "predatory" business model deceives those seeking love and fears they might miss out with an algorithm that rewards "compulsive use" of its platforms.
