My freshman year of college, I quickly became accustomed to the use of online dating apps to talk to guys. Almost every freshman was downloading Tinder and swiping up a storm in class, at the library, sometimes even at the bars. Like most of my peers, I decided to download Tinder and see what all the hype was about. After a few swipes and seeing how many matches I was getting I was instantly hooked. Whenever I was bored I would automatically go on tinder and reply back to whichever random guy sent me an interesting message. Most of the time my Tinder conversations were short, simple, and never really went anywhere. However, sometimes I would find myself talking to certain guys for a little bit longer than others. I would quickly get bored after a week or two and never went through with meeting up with any of the guys. Even though online dating has become such a popular phenomenon in college, I still felt fearful and nervous of the idea of meeting up with someone I’ve met online.

When I happened to randomly run into guys I had spoken with or matched with on tinder in public it was always an awkward experience. Most times I would see someone at the library or at a night out with friends and just laugh about how I had matched with them on tinder. What got really uncomfortable though was when I would run into guys that I had actually given my phone number out to and talked to for a significant amount of time. One night I was out with some friends when I was home during spring break when I ran into a guy I had previously texted with a few months before. We immediately recognized each other and said our hello and I thought that would be the end of it. However, the guy was friends with many of the people I was hanging out with and felt comfortable enough to stay around and try to talk to me. When he began to start flirting with me, I immediately pulled him aside and told him that I wasn’t interested and just wanted to be friends. He was visibly upset with me and began to question why I was on the app and matched with him if I had no intention of actually hanging out with him. I couldn’t believe that this guy was getting so upset over the fact that I didn’t want to get with him. It didn’t make any sense to me why someone would be so upset over getting rejected by someone that they didn’t even know.

After that incident, I deleted my Tinder app for a while from sheer confusion. I had always considered using dating apps in college as some type of game and just a form of entertainment. It never really occurred to me that not everyone had that same mentally. Everyone uses dating apps in college for different reasons, some just for fun, some for hookups, and some people are looking for the real deal. Whatever your reasons for using dating apps are, just remember to not take it too seriously. If you meet the love of your life on it that’s great, but if you don’t that’s perfectly fine too.