1. Digital culture and dating apps
The 21st century is seeing exciting changes driven by new ways of thinking informed by development in digital technology. As we are living in where the internet and the World Wide Web have, the internet has become a major part of work, social, and political life for people and also media, culture and science in advanced economic countries. Murphy describes that the impact of any technology is in the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs. The technology induced a fundamental shift in the way human beings relate to each other. (2000:13) Digital culture now involves not only computer but also portable tablets and mobile phones. The massive popularity of mobile technologies, particularly mobile phones allow almost continuous contact to friends, relatives and others. Digital technology is used within the wider contexts of everyday life.
Any significant new technology will be predicted to transform society. It is important to recognise that the internet, and mobile technologies are more the technologies, they are a set of social relations which integrate the use of technologies with diverse results. In the relationship between technology and culture, culture is the passive agent and technology the active one, culture and society react to technological developments in as cause and effect manner (Miller V. 2001:3) The introduction of technology in people’s relationship has created a paradigm move. From email to social media, everyone uses digital cultures. Communication technologies of Digital technology such as Google, Facebook, Tinder, Hinge, Grindr and Tumblr shape contemporary society in the way of relationship. Perspectives about dating vary greatly between generations.
As a result of a constant access to content via smart phones and portable tablets, the mass explosion of social media technologies has changed communication habits. People identify social media as a new technological tool through which people can communicate, and the emergence of social dating apps is the ways individuals interact on them. Social media technologies allow people to interact more easily and conveniently with each other. The form of connection with other person is same but intention behind the interaction is more or less. The dating apps involve a virtual or digital connection with another person as a tool to seek real life connections.
The dating apps such as Tinder as a case study to show that social media does change the way people date and the effect of real-life encounter or long lasting relationship. Tinder gives users more dating options, Tinder is downloaded more than 20,000 times a day according to The New York Times(Feb.2013), and Tinder’s popularity is proof that people are turning to social media technologies to enlarge their chances of finding a mate.
Tinder helps people to get acquainted with new people they want to know based on the assumption that human beings want connect with one another. Simply, two strangers are digitally matched by a dating app, Tinder. It allocates people to connect with other Tinder users within a close proximity to offer a satisfying match. Thereby it removes any trouble and excitement that typically links with a real-life meeting. In Book of Liquid Modernity presents that in the meeting of strangers are unlike the meetings of kin, a friend, and acquaintances, there is no filling in on the interim trials and tribulation or joys and delights, no shared recollections, nothing to fall back on and to go by in the course of the present encounter. (Bauman Z. 2000:95)
At this point, it needs to think about the meaning of dating in contemporary culture and society. Dating is a formless concept and to confine it as human connection centrally. Like having dinner, one night stand or the beginnings of a long-term relationship can be dating and also real dating is