Fashion
The Irresistible Urge to Change Your Location on a Dating App
Some apps let users check out the dating pool miles away from home. Should they?
Maybe the love of your life is just one swipe away — give or take 500 miles.
That’s the bet some people are making on dating apps when they set their location to a city, state or country that is miles (or even an ocean) away from their actual location, all in hopes of broadening their romantic prospects.
After Lydia Karakyriakou’s long-term relationship ended more than a year ago, she said she felt as if the single men she was seeing on dating apps in Glasgow, where she is from, had either previously dated a friend or had a known dating history among her social circle.
“I just was bored of the same people,” Ms. Karakyriakou said. “I wanted something fresh.”
Using Hinge, Ms. Karakyriakou began searching for matches in and around London, since she would often travel to the city as part of her work as a content creator.
She later ended up matching with a man in Manchester, England, and going on a date with him. She now lives there. “It was so refreshing to be in a city that I’m not used to, go to new places, be with someone that I’ve never seen before and nobody that I knew knew of them,” she said. (Ms. Karakyriakou, who was a contestant on Season 9 of the popular reality dating show “Love Island,” says it’s a plus whenever a match isn’t too familiar with her.)
Most major dating apps offer some version of virtual location hopping. Tinder allows users to like and match with others in different destinations via its Passport Mode, which is available with a paid premium subscription to the app. Hinge lets users change their “neighborhood” at no additional cost. And private, membership-based apps like Raya make it possible to match with people all over the world.
In the short term, expanding your dating pool might seem like a good idea. But what if you hit it off with someone two time zones away? Are you willing to undertake the journey of a long-distance relationship? Or potentially move away from your home, job and friends to be closer to the person?
