--- title: What Dating Apps like Tinder Do To Self-Esteem description: Tinder users are more likely to think of themselves as sex objects than people who don't use the app, suggests a new study of online dating. canonical: https://time.com/4440862/tinder-online-dating-self-esteem-2/ author: Mandy Oaklander article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-08-05T15:14:22.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T09:03:05.283Z og:title: Tinder Users Have Lower Self-Esteem og:description: And are more likely to think of themselves as sex objects og:url: https://time.com/4440862/tinder-online-dating-self-esteem-2/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt540a9d70bce23cb4/698778915f570f19fcb148f1/iphone-social-apps-tinder.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: TIME.com stock photos Social Apps iPhone Tinder og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Tinder Users Have Lower Self-Esteem twitter:description: And are more likely to think of themselves as sex objects twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt540a9d70bce23cb4/698778915f570f19fcb148f1/iphone-social-apps-tinder.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Study: Tinder Users Have Lower Self-Esteem > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters.  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Aug 5, 2016 3:14 PM UTC  Elizabeth Renstrom for TIME  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Aug 5, 2016 3:14 PM UTC Put yourself on Tinder, and you might end up with a date—or a crippling case of negative thoughts about yourself. So suggests a new [study](http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2016/08/tinder-body-image.pdf) about the psychological effects of the popular [dating](http://motto.time.com/4273249/how-to-tell-if-its-a-date/) app, presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association. In the study, researchers asked a group of 1,300 mostly college kids to rate how they generally felt about themselves through questionnaires and self-reports. Questions like _How satisfied are you with your thighs?_ and _How likely are you to make physical comparisons to others?_ clued the researchers into their [body image](http://motto.time.com/4381895/chloe-grace-moretz-beauty/) and self esteem. At the very end of the questionnaire, people were asked if they used Tinder. Compared to people who weren’t on the [dating app](http://motto.time.com/4407854/meghan-trainor-dating-apps/), Tinder users had lower levels of self-worth, reported being less satisfied with their faces and looks and were more ashamed of their bodies. They were also more likely to think of themselves as sexual objects, to internalize societal ideals about beauty, to compare their appearances to others and to constantly monitor how they looked, the researchers found. This was true for men as well as women. “If they used Tinder, they reported more negative scores on all of our measures,” says Trent Petrie, co-author of the paper and professor in the psychology department at the University of North Texas. “We thought that was pretty interesting, given the fact that gender usually plays a role in how women and men respond to these types of questionnaires.” Women, it turns out, usually feel the worst about themselves. But the most fascinating result of all was that men—not women—who used Tinder had the lowest levels of self-esteem. That may simply be because so many more men than women use Tinder, the researchers speculate. Past research has shown that women are more discerning with their swipes than men, who swipe right more liberally. But saying _yes_ so often with the flick of a finger comes with a risk: the much higher chance of being rejected. “The men, in essence, are put in a position that women often find themselves in, certainly in the dating scene: They’re now being evaluated and are being determined whether or not somebody is interested in them \[based on their looks\],” says Petrie. “Men may be more likely to get more swipe-lefts. And that can take a toll, perhaps, on those young men.” In future studies, the researchers plan to look at how the reasons people use Tinder—whether they’re there just to see who matches with them, to hook up or to find a partner—relates to their psychological wellbeing. Research by other groups indicates that most people on Tinder are there primarily for entertainment, not for finding sex partners or a [date](http://motto.time.com/4272816/first-date-advice/) (let alone true love), which may help explain the findings. The study can’t determine whether Tinder _makes_ people felt worse about their bodies, whether people with low self-esteem just tend to use it more, or some other reason. “But in general, we can say that when you use any of these current social media platforms, you’re putting yourself out there for potential evaluation,” Petrie says. Here’s a little dating advice from the psychologist: consider why you’re there. “These platforms may not be the best place to get validation that you’re an ok person or you’re attractive,” he says. “Perhaps we want to look a little more inside ourselves, and to our close friends, for that validation.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4440862/tinder-online-dating-self-esteem-2/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4440862/tinder-online-dating-self-esteem-2/"},"headline":"Study: Tinder Users Have Lower Self-Esteem","datePublished":"2016-08-05T15:14:22.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T09:03:05.283Z","description":"People on Tinder are more likely to think of themselves as sex objects than people who don't use the app","url":"https://time.com/4440862/tinder-online-dating-self-esteem-2/","keywords":["motto","Sex/Relationships"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt540a9d70bce23cb4/698778915f570f19fcb148f1/iphone-social-apps-tinder.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Mandy Oaklander","jobTitle":"Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt540a9d70bce23cb4/698778915f570f19fcb148f1/iphone-social-apps-tinder.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"TIME.com stock photos Social Apps iPhone Tinder","caption":"TIME.com stock photos Social Apps iPhone Tinder","creditText":"Elizabeth Renstrom for TIME","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/motto/","name":"motto"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4440862/tinder-online-dating-self-esteem-2/","name":"Study: Tinder Users Have Lower Self-Esteem"}}]}] ```