and it may not be hurting their mental health, suggests a new Northwestern Medicine study that monitored adolescents over six months.
The findings challenge the popular belief that dating apps are harmful for teenagers. Instead, the study suggests, these apps may provide teens with valuable social connections, particularly for those who identify as sexual and gender minorities populations.
"Perhaps parents don't need to immediately panic when they see their teens using dating apps," said study author Lilian Li, a postdoctoral research fellow of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "What's more important is for parents to have a conversation with their kids about why they are using these apps in the first place."
The study is the first to track teen dating app usage through a smartphone app that recorded real-time keyboard activity. Past research has relied on adolescents' self-reported dating app usage, which can be unreliable due to poor recall or discomfort in admitting dating app use.
The findings were published on July 21 in the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science.
What apps teens are using - and why it matters
The study identified the most frequently used apps among teens.
- Tinder
- Yubo
- Hinge
- Bumble
- Pdbee
See the full list here, ranked by number of messages. In the study, dating app users were more likely to identify as a member of a sexual and/or gender minority group, suggesting these apps may offer a safe and anonymous space to build community away from real-life discrimination.
Although dating app users had higher rates of risky behaviors - such as rule breaking and substance use - at the beginning of the study, there were no significant differences in mental health outcomes between users and non-users at the six-month follow-up.
Rates of depressive symptoms and social anxiety were also quite similar in both groups, further highlighting the largely comparable levels of mental health problems in teens who do and do not use dating apps.
How the study was conducted
Li and her colleagues tracked 149 adolescents aged 13 to 18 from the New York City and Chicago areas as part of a larger longitudinal project. With parental permission, the teens downloaded an app called the Effortless Assessment Research System on their phones that passively tracked their keyboard strokes over a six-month period.
Mental health outcomes and risky behaviors were measured through clinical interviews and self-reports. The study found that 23.5% of teens used dating apps at some point across the six-month study period, a higher rate than reported in previous research.
Li suggests this could be due to the study's inclusion of friendship-seeking apps like Yubo and MeetMe, which are similar to dating apps but don't require users to be over 18. A previous analysis of app reviews found many adolescents use these apps to date, with one user describing them as "kid Tinder." On adult dating apps like Tinder, teens often lie about their age to create accounts.
In the future, Li and her colleagues plan to explore screen time on dating apps to capture passive behaviors like swiping and liking photos, which they did not measure in this study. They also aim to replicate the study in a larger sample of adolescent dating app users.
"Teen dating relationships can shape mental health well into adulthood, sometimes predicting factors such as self-esteem, depression and anxiety," Li said. "So, understanding how teens engage with dating apps is crucial for understanding this important aspect of their social development."
The other Northwestern University authors are Stewart Shankman, Madeline McGregor and Sarah Sarkas.
This paper, titled "A Longitudinal Study of Objective Dating App Usage and its Relation to Mental Health in Adolescents" was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, including R01 MH119771 (RPA, SAS), U01 MH116923 (NBA, RPA), and K99 MH133991 (LYL). The Morgan Stanley Foundation also supported this research project (RPA).
