8 Tips For Navigating Dating Apps While Social Distancing

The latest feature from Hinge, Date From Home, gives users the option to easily let their matches know when they're ready for a digital date. That period between matching, chatting, and transitioning to a date can be tough to navigate, and Hinge recently surveyed its users to find about a third agree that they felt the least confident when turning conversations into actual face-to-face meetings. To keep chats from fizzling out before someone makes the ask, users can now indicate they're ready to "date from home" with a match and the selection will remain private until that person selects the option as well. When both parties agree, Hinge will notify the pair, encouraging them to move things off the app and onto the video chat platform of their choice. This genius little fix has potential to drastically improve our cadence on dating apps in general, long after this pandemic is behind us.

Bumble Video Chat became available in June 2019 and offers virtual dating right from the chat window at any time. Participants must have already matched or expressed mutual interest, but from there, you simply use the video function to begin the conversation and/or in response to a message. I've come up against a bit of resistance when suggesting a video chat in this arena, garnering responses like, "Perhaps later, I'm about to go surfing," and this winner, "Maybe we slip into some virtual reality suits and see where that takes us." I have had one successful video chat on Bumble, though it waned as we discussed the venues we'd visit when we could go out in public again, and ended with half promises to meet in-person eventually.

Instead of chatting in-app, take the next step with your match and move things to the computer for a virtual date that doesn't have to feel like a work meeting. The trick is to still dress nicely, set the mood with maybe a candle and a beverage of choice, arrive on time, and keep the date to an hour at the most. But be careful to exit your date gracefully, even if you're not feeling a match.

If video chatting just isn't your thing, use this time to fill the pipeline. Spend a bit more time than usual swiping, matching, and conversing, and if you get bored of all that, I suggest outsourcing it. You don't have to go as crazy as I did when I let my mum take over my dating apps, but perhaps check out Ship, the dating app from the team over at Betches that lets your friends help you assess romantic candidates. If that's still too much screen time, hand the whole thing over to a professional. "If you want to get serious about finding love, now is a great time to call in a coach for help," Matchmaker Skylar Korby told POPSUGAR. "It's not about finding as many people as possible, it's about finding the right person. That's what a matchmaker can do for you." Once I get tired of running this virtual show, I may hand things over to Skylar.