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Earlier this week, Tinder launched “Double Date,” a new feature that allows users to—wait for it—double date by pairing their profiles with friends and swiping for other paired matches. Double Daters can sync their profiles with up to three friends, arguably rendering the “Double Date” of it all something of a misnomer, but that’s neither here nor there.
For world-weary daters like myself who have been swiping since the apps went mainstream a decade ago, this news may trigger flashbacks to the mid-2010s chaos that was “Tinder Social,” a similar (and relatively short-lived) feature that allowed daters to swipe as a group. But enough showing my age. While Tinder Social was ostensibly a flop, launching in 2016 and sunsetting the following year, the app seems to be betting on a new generation of daters better suited to the group-dating mentality.
As Tinder’s resident relationship expert, Devyn Simone, puts it, “Gen Z isn’t shy about being, well, a little shy.” For a generation of post-pandemic daters who crave in-person interaction but were deprived of it during their formative years, “Dating can feel like a high-stakes performance,” Simone tells Cosmo. Double Date “turns it into a team sport, one that comes with a built-in gut check.”
Meanwhile, in an age of dating-app burnout where singles are craving real-life connections but aren’t sure where to find them, a group-date scenario—however app-originated—could potentially make a first date feel less like an algorithmically generated job interview and more like a low-stakes hang where sparks can fly (or not) organically.
According to a press release, the new feature has already proven popular among its target demo, with nearly 90 percent of Double Date profiles coming from users under 29 years old (the oldest Gen Zs are, like my Zillennial self, currently 28). Testing also found that the feature may be particularly attractive to women, who were three times more likely to swipe right on a pair than on an individual profile.
As for how that’s playing out in real life—well, as one TikToker put it, “Everywhere I turn they release more tools for men to be absolutely heinous because why did they release a Double Date feature on Tinder? I do not need to be seeing more than one of you guys at once.”
Anyway, whether this summer is destined to be the summer of double (or triple or quadruple) dates or Double Date is headed for the same fate as its Millennial predecessor, I think we can all get on board with anything that gets us out of the house and actually interacting with other people. Life’s short, go forth and date (with friends!).
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