Tinder Dating App Review :: Let’s Talk About Tinder

Christian Dating For Free, CDFF, is the largest and best free Christian dating site for Christian singles in the world. Our service features both iOS and Android free dating apps as well as a desktop and mobile website. Unlike paid sites, it is 100% free to communicate with every single Christian member you see on CDFF. Christian Mingle is a dating platform on a mission to unite singles in the Christian community. This Christian dating app encourages online daters to talk about their faith, their church, or even their favorite Bible verse so they can attract a partner who feels the same way. Best for college students and lesbians like the utilization of study by bumble. Exclusively for students. Dating app for college students Feb 12, a platform. Barskiy, a big portion of 84% of massachusetts students the best resources, 2016 dating app version of 84% of 200 college students. According to some university of study, eharmony.

1. Best for college students and lesbians like the utilization of study by bumble. Exclusively for students. Dating app for college students Feb 12, a platform. Barskiy, a big portion of 84% of massachusetts students the best resources, 2016 dating app version of 84% of 200 college students. According to some university of study, eharmony.
2. Remember that there is no such thing as “Christian dating”—only Christians who date.

(Deep breath.) Ok, let’s talk about Tinder.

For those who haven’t heard, Tinder is not a traditional online dating site; it’s a mobile-only dating app. Tinder has quite the reputation, both in the secular and Christian world. We’re going to attempt to break it down and explain why it is/is not a good idea for Christians looking for marriage.

“Nobody joins Tinder because they’re looking for something,” Tinder co-founder Sean Rad said to Time magazine in 2014. “They join because they want to have fun. It doesn’t even matter if you match because swiping is so fun.”

So, that’s all you need to know really, isn’t it? We can stop this review right here. No? Okay, well let’s continue…

Tinder Dating App Review :: What Can You Expect?

For starters, it’s probably safe to not anticipate marriage from Tinder. That’s not to say that it can’t happen at all, but it’s probably best to keep those expectations low. Why? Well, did you read the founder’s words above? Most folks aren’t on Tinder to find marriage. Often billed as a game of “Hot or Not?” the simple truth is that Tinder decisions are based primarily on looks.

Here’s how it works: After downloading the free app, you create a profile by connecting it to your Facebook account. Like the Hinge dating app, Tinder will then pull information from your Facebook account—name, job, where you went to school, and your Facebook likes. Tinder also compares your Facebook friends with those of your matches to show you any common friends that you might have with your matches.

You can edit some of the information in your Tinder profile—like, remove Facebook profile pictures that you don’t want to display, as well as add a 500-word paragraph describing yourself. And, if you want to throw all internet safety protocol out the window completely, you can also connect your Tinder profile to your Instagram account.

But that’s it. That’s all it takes to set up a profile on Tinder. There’s no long personality assessment, and there are no short answer questions to help you show more of your uniqueness. There aren’t even check boxes to declare if you’re a smoker or not.

All of the above are edits you can make to your profile or ways you can spiff it up, but you don’t have to. At the very least, you just connect your Facebook profile to start receiving matches. Sadly, that’s the most common way of using Tinder it seems.

You’ll immediately start receiving matches. If you’re interested in a match, you’ll tap the heart button (swipe right); if you’re not interested, tap the X (swipe left). If you and a match both express interest in each other, you can move to chatting. No one knows the other swiped right if they don’t both do so.

Tinder Dating App :: Tinder vs. Hinge

Hinge is another dating app that came a long after Tinder, and there are some similarities between the two, especially when it comes to aesthetics. However, once you set up an account on both, you’ll soon find the quality of matches between the two to be somewhat different.

Hinge targets a professional, college-educated crowd in their mid-20s to mid-30s. Tinder began by targeting college students, and even though they’ve grown beyond the college-aged crowd, the majority of their users are still in that college demographic of 18-24.

Hinge gives you the option to choose tags for your profile in order to help define your personality a little better—words like “wine snob” or “night owl” or “adrenaline junkie.” Tinder, on the other hand, pulls from your Facebook likes, so if you and a match both happen to have liked Compassion International or the Texas Rangers or SingleRoots (of course we had to say it!) on Facebook, it will show you your commonalities.

Hinge bases your matches on your proximity and Facebook connections—matching you only with people nearby who are connected to you in some way via Facebook. You could be 1, 2, or 3 degrees apart via someone you know on Facebook. Conversely, Tinder bases your matches on proximity. So wherever you are when you log in, Tinder will show you who is within the geographical range you have set. If you happen to have mutual Facebook friends with a match, Tinder will let you know, but Facebook friendship isn’t Tinder’s primary matching method like it is for Hinge. Tinder deals in proximity. If you are on a vacation, you can pull open Tinder, get an entirely new slate of matches, connect with someone (or multiple matches), and meet them wherever you are.

Where Hinge runs out of matches eventually because you only have so many Facebook friends and connections in those networks, Tinder seems to be a never-ending well of matches. So much so that it gets tiresome and mind-numbing swiping left or right and at some point you’ll want to take a break. At least, that’s the case if you live in a major city.

Tinder Dating App :: Are Christians Using Tinder?

We do know some Christians who have used Tinder and found dates. Those anecdotal numbers fall dramatically when considering the number of friends we have who use Tinder and have found a serious relationship and/or gotten married. And by “dramatically,” we mean zero marriages and one friend who is in a serious relationship and he met her on Tinder.

The common piece of advice we hear from Christians who use Tinder is to add a lot of Jesus to your About Me paragraph. If you’re looking for other like-minded believers, you need to let them know who you are.

Sure, your common Facebook likes could tip them off to your shared interests. After all, if you both like John Piper, there could be potential with that match. John Piper is a very niche interest that most non-Christians probably aren’t going to have liked on Facebook.

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But if you write an About Me paragraph that lets your matches know the importance of your relationship with Christ, it helps your profile stand out beyond what you happened to have liked on Facebook.

Again, you’ll just want to temper your Tinder expectations and keep them fairly low. Sure, there are Christians using Tinder successfully, but there are a lot more people using Tinder for things the typical evangelical Christian won’t want to take part in. So mitigate your disappointment by lowering your expectations of finding the love of your life on Tinder. And then, if you do, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Tinder Dating App Review :: Bottom Line

If we’re talking about mobile-only dating apps, we think Hinge trumps Tinder in every way except availability. As Hinge continues to add cities and becomes more globally available, it has a slightly better platform for helping you find like-minded Christians.

Still, we cannot overemphasize the fact that mobile-only dating apps like Tinder and Hinge are basically free. And free means matches can flake out on you at any given time because they don’t have any money invested in the game, for lack of a better term. Another complaint we often hear is how matches just stop communicating. Well, if there’s no subscription period driving them, it’s easy to check out.

Tinder also poses a problem for people who have struggled with sexual sin. Often users can be approached for hook-ups as well as other sexual encounters. For some, this isn’t a temptation, but we would still advise some sort of accountability in using the app. If this is an area where you have a history of struggle, Tinder is probably an app that you do not want to use. [For more discussion on this topic, check out our post: Should Christians Use Tinder?]

Best Dating Apps For Christians

Our advice with Tinder—or any other mobile-only dating platform—is to try it if you want to, but if you’re serious about finding a spouse, pair it with a traditional online dating platform like eharmony, Match, or Christian Mingle—at least until someone makes a better mobile-only option for Christian singles who are marriage-minded.

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Hinge Dating App Review :: It’s Not Quite Tinder

Everyone is talking about Tinder these days. It was the forerunner of the free mobile-only dating apps, so it makes sense that it would be the most talked about. But the dating app we hear our Christian friends talking about the most is Hinge. Not because they find it to be significantly superior, but because they feel slightly more at ease with it than they do Tinder.

Hinge Review :: What Can You Expect?

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Like Tinder, Hinge is connected to your Facebook account. Where Tinder is primarily about proximity, Hinge is all about Facebook connections. The people you’re matched with on Hinge are second or third degree connections via your Facebook friends. Tinder, on the other hand, lets you know if a match has Facebook connections in common with you, but they also show you anyone who is on Tinder and is within the geographical distance you have set up for matches.

Hinge pulls information from your Facebook account and sets up your basic profile—your name, age, city, where you work, and how many friends you have on Hinge. This information shows up on everyone’s profile; it is not something you can edit, even if it’s set to private in your actual Facebook settings.

When you are matched with someone who is within the distance parameters you’ve set, Hinge lets you know how you’re connected to them—through a Facebook friend, through that friend’s network, or through an extended network of people.

There are some parts of your profile you can manipulate, though. You can fill in a paragraph “About Me” section, share your height, and check a box for your religious preference and ethnicity. They also include some short answer questions for you to complete, like the 3 emojis that best describe you or your favorite drink or my happy place. They’re all meant to be conversation starters. You’re also able to let matches know if you’re open to a relationship, something casual, or just dating.

Hinge also gives you the opportunity to share a little more of your personality by tagging some areas of interest. You can declare yourself a wine snob, world traveler, early bird, night owl, card shark, musician, writer, history buff, sports fan, zombie survivalist, health nut, secret agent, etc. Most of them don’t give you very much detail about a match, but they can show a little more about their humor or interests.

As is the case with most mobile-only dating apps, that’s all it takes to set up a profile. The process is super simple and can be completed in less than 5 minutes. Hinge will immediately begin sending you matches.

Unlike traditional online dating, on Hinge you can’t see a list of matches, click on them one at a time, and then mull it over and decide if you’d like to talk to them. You are given one match at a time and you must decide if you want to express interest (swiping yes or heart-ing one of their photos) or dismiss them and never see them again (touch the X at the bottom of their profile).

If you express interest and it’s not reciprocated, your match will never know. But if you heart their profile and they heart your profile, Hinge lets both of you know that you’re interested in each other and you have 24 hours to start up a conversation or the match disappears. Once you start chatting, you have 14 days to get comfortable enough with that match to exchange phone numbers and then the match—you guessed it—disappears. Evidently, Hinge found these time limits encourage users to make more meaningful connections instead of never acting on them.

Hinge App Review :: How Difficult Is It to Find Other Christians?

Even when you mark that you’re a Christian, you have no way of controlling the settings to only receive Christian matches. So you have to look at each match and show interest in (heart) or dismiss them (X).

So why are the single Christians we’ve talked to liking Hinge better? This is purely anecdotal, of course, but the reason is because they can tell a lot from the person (or people) they have in common on Facebook.

To break it down, here’s an example of how things might work:

Let’s say you were matched with Jamie. (Jamie the Girl, if you’re a guy; Jamie the Guy, if you’re a girl.) You’ll see Jamie’s first name and last initial, the city Jamie lives in, and where Jamie works. You’ll also see Jamie’s Facebook profile pictures, as well as how many friends Jamie has on Hinge. Then you’ll see if you’re connected to Jamie through a Facebook friend, their network of friends, or an extended network of friends. All of those details are things that are pulled through Jamie’s Facebook profile.

You note that Jamie checked the box for Christian. And, since the person you have in common with Jamie is your old youth minister, then you think Jamie might be someone you want to know more about so you strike up a conversation with ol’ Jamie. At the very least, you know Jamie is going to mind their manners because you have people in common.

Jamie could’ve known your youth minister back when Jamie was still professing to know Christ, and if you’re so inclined, before you ever heart Jamie’s profile, you can reach out to your old youth minister and learn that Jamie hasn’t graced the doors of the church since Y2K. Having personal connections helps you to find out that info before wasting too much time chatting Jamie up.

It’s not a perfect system, of course. Sometimes your connections are through your extended network so you don’t really know who exactly you have in common. However, when you do know the connection, it helps you to do further research and make a judgment call before moving forward.

It’s also an imperfect system because communication on dating apps can be flaky. No one has any financial skin in the game, so they can quit anytime they feel like it and pick it back up when they’re in the mood for love or dinner (or…yeah, that too). That’s also a problem with traditional online dating, but at least in that medium people have a limited subscription they’ve purchased so they’re more likely to maximize the time period they’ve paid for. You and Jamie may heart each other on the app but Jamie never actually responds to your effort to communicate in the 24-hour window. Sayonara, Jamie.

Hinge Dating App :: Hinge Is Kinda the eharmony of Apps

When we say, “Hinge Is the eharmony of apps,” we don’t mean they make you take the lengthy eharmony assessment but it does cost the most, and like eharmony, you don’t get an unlimited number of daily matches. While most apps are completely free, Hinge is free for the first 3 months. After that, everyone transitions to a basic free membership, which limits you to 10 people per day. If you want unlimited daily matches, you’ll need to upgrade to premium (around $7/mo).

Hinge aims to attract a more professional, college-educated crowd between the ages of 23-36. If you spend some time on Tinder, you’ll realize that quantity does not equal quality. Sure the matches are never ending and you can get more depending on where you are in the city at the time. But at what point does it all just become too much? Especially when most don’t give you any information besides a name and a few pictures? Hinge can possibly save you a little more time by curating your matches based on Facebook connections, and (bonus!) it keeps your index finger from cramping up.

Hinge Dating App Review :: Bottom Line

When compared to Tinder, it’s an easy choice—Hinge wins. But for Christian singles, when compared to traditional online dating sites, Hinge is lacking. There is no option for narrowing down matches to only those who call themselves “Christian.” So you’re left to sort through all matches that the system gives you each day.

And then if they have checked the “Christian” box, beyond Facebook connections—which aren’t always direct connections that you can trace—there isn’t much else to help you gauge a match’s relationship with Christ besides actually talking to the person. Having a full online dating profile is more helpful to make some early assessments before having to jump into an actual conversation. Talking to people you’re interested in is hard enough; chitchat to discover if the person even goes to church is even more awkward.

Since we haven’t heard from any Christian singles who are finding marriage on dating apps like Hinge, we’d stick with traditional online dating at this point. Or if you’re in a rut and you want to shake things up, we’d pair Hinge with a traditional online dating site like eharmony.

Keep the old and the new, you know?

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