Tinder Embedded Values

Human beings are creatures of habit. Shannon Vallor, an American philosopher and professor at Santa Clara, argues that these habits or the repetition of certain activities is what defines one’s moral character in her article titled “Social Networking Technology and the Virtues”. Specifically, she mentions that interacting with social media, a daily repetition for many of us, can alter one’s values for better or for worse by promoting certain values through the framework of how we interact with the software – what I will call embedded values.

Those of us who haven't been living underneath a rock know what Tinder is. For those of you that are a bit out of the loop, it is a modern location based social media that allows for people in similar areas to chat with each other and potentially meet up. This was all that Tinder was originally intended for but has transformed into an online platform used to find people to hook up with. This behavior is a result of embedded values created by the way tinder is programmed.

The two parts of the programming that encourage this behavior is the gender interest prompt and the display of potential match profiles. One of the first questions Tinder asks you when signing up, is what gender you are interested in matching with. This is the bit of programming that turns this app from a location based social media site and more into a dating site since ordinarily on social media you can be friends with genders you aren’t attracted to. When you are looking at a potential match on tinder, what you initially see is the user's picture with their name and less than a sentence about them. Although you can view more details about them, the app programming encourages users to swipe left (not match) or swipe right (match) based mainly on the picture provided. This is what turned Tinder into a hookup app. The app went from the initial idea of being able to match up with people in your area with similar interest to matching up with attractive people in your area and often not knowing much about them.

(Left) Gender interest prompt display

(Right) Potential match display

Some may not see this as a big issue -- so what if people want to hook up with attractive people close by? That may be true, but Tinder has become so big that it could influence our societies’ values and not just the people using the software. What it means to be in a relationship with someone may drastically change and what we want in our relationships may as well. If we no longer care about intimate connection and love for another person based on personality and what we want out of our relationships is simply sex, then this may not be an issue. If these are values that we wish to uphold, Tinder may be something that we have to rethink or refrain from.