Tinder, Grindr, Happn; nearly half of young adults search for love online. Elisabeth Timmermans shows how online dating is changing our love life.

With about 1.5 million users, Tinder is well at the top of the list of most popular dating apps in the Netherlands. Is all this online dating killing romance, or should we see it as a great solution for singles in search of a partner? Elisabeth Timmermans studies the influence of social media and dating apps on our relationships. She examines mobile daters’ experience with ghosting and infidelity, but also looks at the Tinder algorithm and the way dating apps make their money. In her book Liefde in tijden van Tinder (2019), she explains all about our (online) dating behavior.

Dr. Elisabeth Timmermans is a postdoctoral researcher at the department of Media & Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam. In 2017 she obtained her doctoral degree in social sciences at the KU Leuven (Belgium). You can find more information about Timmermans’ research findings on her personal website (Dutch). She can also be found on Instagram @loveintimesoftinder (English).