The Secret Mathematical Reason Dating Apps Don’t Work

追加: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]This video is sponsored by Squarespace.

[00:00:01]So, everyone knows the idea behind dating apps is that the more people you see, the better your chances are of finding someone, right? But that's actually not true. And the reason why comes down to something very simple mathematically. And we're going to go through that math in this video step by step. But the short version is basically that there is a hidden limit when using dating apps that people don't really think about. And that's the fact that there is like a certain fixed number of people in the world that would actually be right for you, would actually be compatible with you. So what that means is that even if you're on an app and you see way more people that are also looking to date than you would, for example, in real life, the number of people that are actually could be compatible with you is still constrained in the same way it would be if you were looking for someone in real life. So it might be constrained by like your preferences, your lifestyle, where you live, your age range, what you actually want, and whether or not this person actually likes you back. A bunch of other values that are like important to you if you in order for someone to be compatible with you. So there's a certain set of people out there who could realistically work. And that set doesn't just magically become bigger just because you downloaded an app. What the app actually does is it shows you more people from that same pool, right?

[00:01:12]And so while the app could help you reach them faster, it doesn't actually create more of these people in the first place. And that seems kind of obvious maybe if you think about it, but actually it's not obvious. I did more I did more math for this, but basically on paper, right, the app should be better because you're seeing more people. So your chances of running into someone compatible should go up. But when you actually break it down mathematically, it doesn't actually work either. So what the am I saying? I'm saying that both yes from the math the app can increase your chances of finding someone who is compatible with you but at the same time it also makes your chances of being with someone compatible worse and that sounds contradictory but don'ting worry don't worry your little brain about it okay I'm going to break it down step by step I'm going to hold your hand through it okay we have to go through the math everyone's favorite subject your favorite subject okay so pay attention is going to be great okay so let's start by talking about population size right so let's imagine that there are an n number of people that you could possibly meet. So this would be like the population of your city or like your town etc. like the the number of people that you could possibly run into. So that's going to be N. And then out of those people, there's a smaller group which we're going to call C, right? So C is basically just the group of people who are actually compatible with you.

[00:02:27]So, when I use the word compatible in this video, I mean like people who are truly compatible with you, like you share the same or similar values or the right age for you, your personalities would go well together, etc. Like the things that would realistically mean that this person would be right for you long term. And the number of people in that group, we're going to call that K.

[00:02:45]Okay, so K is basically how many people out there are realistically right for you. And here's the important part, right? So the dating app does not change K. Like the app can't create more compatible people. Like Tinder or like Hinge can't just like suddenly make 50 more people right for you instead of like if there's actually five people.

[00:03:04]Like the number is just whatever the number is. And when you roughly estimate it, it's prettying small. Like between 0.1 to 2% of the population. If you're interested in like how to rustfully estimate that, I'm going to put it on screen here. Pause the video. But basically K is a small number which the dating app can't change. And this is where probability comes in, right? So if K is the number of people who are actually right for you and N is the total number of people, the population size of people that you could possibly meet, right? Then the probability that any random person you see is compatible with you is basically just K divided by N. So if K is small relative to N, then the probability is also going to be really small. But as we said before, what the app does change or what what the app is able to do, however, is like change the number of people that you can actually see, right? So now imagine that you're swiping through profiles on the app, right? It could be Tinder, it could be Bumble, it could be Hinge, whatever it is. Okay? So let's say you see m number of people on the app, right? And for each person you see, there's basically two options, right? Either the person is compatible with you or the person is not compatible with you, whether you at the time realize it or not. So you can kind of think of it like every time you swipe it's either a yes, which we'll say is one, right? If they're compatible with you, or zero, they're not compatible with you. And what this basically means is if you add all of those up, like all of the yeses, that gives you how many compatible people you actually encountered, which looks complicated, but it's actually very simple, but basically it means that on average, the expected number of compatible people that you run into would be how many people you saw multiplied by how rare compatibility actually is. And that's how we get this, right? So like people seen times probability that they're compatible. And that probability like how rare it is to find someone who actually fits you comes from the fixed number that we talked about earlier. So when you put it all together, right, the app can increase how many people you see, but it doesn't actually change how rare compatibility is. Now, if you actually plug numbers into this formula, right, it actually gets even more interesting. So let's just say for the sake of the example that about 1% of the people you see are actually compatible with you, right?

[00:05:10]which is in line with like general studies and estimates on this. So here we're going to say P is 1%. So P equals 0.01. So using P, let's compare your chances in real life versus using a dating app. So we're going to start with real life. So let's say in real life over the course of like a week, right?

[00:05:28]You meaningfully encounter around a hundred people. And I know immediately one of youers in the comment is going to be like, I would never encounter that many people in a week. Shut the up.

[00:05:38]Yeah, I know. That's that's why you watch my videos at 2:00 in the morning in bed. But that's not the point. What I mean by encounter here when I use the word encounter is if you and like one other person are in the same shared social setting long enough for you to notice them. So for example, if you're in a coffee shop with like eight other people there and you're all in there for like more than 2 minutes, like long enough for you to be able to like see them and clock them and register them, that's going to be eight encounters.

[00:06:04]Okay? So you don't actually have to talk to any of these people in order for it to count as an encounter in the definition that we're using right now.

[00:06:11]So for example, you could be like at in class or like at a party in a bar and there are like people around you. If you're able to like see them and register them, then you're racking up encounters even if you don't interact with them, if you get what I mean. So let's just say that in real life you rack up like 100 encounters per week. So using that, we're going to calculate the probability of you running into at least one compatible person in a week, right?

[00:06:35]Using the formula, which is this, I'm going to put it on screen, which looks kind of complicated, but basically it's actually really simple. What it means is because we said that P equals 0.01 because each person you see has 1% chance of being compatible with you. It also means that 99% chance they're not compatible with you. So that's what the 1 minus P, which is equal to 0.99. So if you encounter or you see a 100 people that that's going to be M, right? So the chance that every single one of those 100 people that you see is not compatible is a mismatch with you is basically 0.99 * 0.99 * 0.99 * 0.99 100 times, right? So that's the same as 0.99 to the power of 100. And that comes out to around 0.37 or 37%. So basically that means that there's a 37% chance that you find nobody that week. Which also means that the chance that you find at least one compatible person that week is 1 minus 0.37, which is 0.63. So about 63%.

[00:07:33]So in real life, you have about a 63% chance of running into at least one compatible person in a week. And if you're watching this video, if you're actually following the math, then chances are you're probably like a relatively young, pretty bright person.

[00:07:47]You're probably online a little bit too much. You're probably also someone that actually wants to improve themselves.

[00:07:53]Yes, you're still figuring yourself out, your love life obviously, but there are also other aspects like your career or being a creative person that you probably also want to figure out. And if that sounds like you, then I think one thing that is worth saying is if you're trying to improve your dating life, a lot of that doesn't come from dating itself. It comes from having your life together in other ways and having confidence in yourself. And the only way to do that is actually to have other things in your life going on, whether that's working on a project, a portfolio, a personal brand. And that's where Squarespace is actually really useful because it's a really easy way to build a website that's completely yours without needing to know how to code at all. I personally made my own website on Squarespace and they have really good design tools which make it incredibly intuitive to use. You can use Blueprint AI which basically means you just tell it what you want the site to be about and then it'll just like make it and then once the site is up and running you can just drag and drop things and edit that thanks to Fluid Engine and you don't need to know how to code or any any of that. They also have built-in analytics, so you can look at the numbers, see where traffic is coming in, and you can like optimize the rest of your site based on that. Or like if you're just like nosy about where your audience is, which is what I personally use Squarespace analytics for. So if you want a rogue, but probably more straightforward way of optimizing your love life or just like making just making your life better, easiest way, get the other aspects of your life in order. Go to squarespace.com for a free 14-day trial. When you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com/crystal to get 10% off your first website or domain using code crystal. Cool. So, now that we did real life, let's contrast that with the dating app. So, as mentioned before, right, instead of 100 encounters on an app, let's say you swipe through 500 profiles in a week, right? So, we're going to call one swipe on the app like one encounter. It's like one person that you've seen. So, on the app, we'll assume that you encounter 500 people per week. So if we plug that into the same formula, right, the chance that you find at least one compatible person in a week on the app is basically 99% chance. So there's like a 99% chance that you encounter someone compatible with you in a week when using an app. So mathematically, the app looks amazing, right? Like it looksing awesome because it massively increases your chance of finding someone purely because you're just encountering and seeing way more people. So on paper, the app is just better at this, right? because it gives you more shots and that makes it just much more likely that at least one of those shots is going to hit, right? And that also lines up with the other way of looking at this which we talked about which is basically if you remember the number of compatible people you expect to find is basically how many people you see times how rare compatibility actually is. Another thing that apps are good at the main thing is basically that they expand your reach, right? Because you're not limited to your immediate environment like your workplace or your school or your friend group, right? So that basically means that you're effectively pulling from a much larger population and so the app can increase n essentially which is especially useful if you're looking for something very specific or you have like a niche lifestyle like a certain set of values or if you're just in a smaller town where there's just literally less people around you. In that case the app can help you access more of the people who are already in that compatible group. So to be clear, right, apps are not useless. They can absolutely make the search more efficient and in some cases they improve your odds slightly, right?

[00:11:05]So why the is this video still so why the why is there so much video left?

[00:11:09]Well, it's because if you've ever used a dating app then you know the feeling which is why the does it still feel so bad? Like why why does it feel it doesn't reallying work anyway? Because all of the math we just did, right? The app should be really good. So what the And that's because all of the math that we just did is only measuring one very specific thing, right? Which is do you encounter someone who could be compatible with you? But what we failed to measure earlier is whether or not something actually happens after you encounter someone that's compatible with you because finding someone and actually ending up with that person are not the same thing, right? And like this is where the model just kind of doesn't work as well because in real life and especially on the apps there are multiple steps between oh this person could work like we could be compatible and this becomes a relationship right and between those two stages every single one of those little steps in between has its own drop off or like more people will fall off. So even though the app gives you more initial opportunities, most of the opportunities never make it through the pipeline. And that's where things start to flip, right? Because the thing about the app is like when you use it, it is like trying to get through five different layers of failure. First problem on the app is that most people are just not going to follow through. Like on an app, getting a match doesn't really, if you've ever used a dating app, you know that like getting a match doesn't really mean anything. The vast majority of matches never turn into a conversation at all. or even if they do, a lot of the conversations just die or they don't respond. Or even if they do respond and even when the conversation is fine, the vast majority of those also will never turn into an actual date. There's data suggesting that only a small fraction of matches ever lead to a real life meeting. Second problem with the app, I have to address the elephant in the room, but just statistically speaking, the gender ratio on apps is uneven because there's usually way more men using dating apps. And that leads to men and women behaving differently partially due to the fact that there just are way more men than women using apps. But in general on apps, men tend to swipe on like a much larger percentage of profiles, right? while women tend to be much more selective, which creates the weird imbalance because it means that the average man might match with 2 to 5% of the people that he swipes on, while the average woman might match with like 30 to 40%. So, the experience is completely different depending on who you are. And it means that for some people, it feels like nothing is happening. They're getting no success.

[00:13:27]And then for others, it feels like there's too much attention or it's too overwhelming. And then that kind of pushes both sides into worse behavior because it might mean that you become more selective or you become more impatient. But both sides are probably going to start feeling more disposable with the other. Third problem with the dating app is that the interactions themselves are just weaker. Like it just doesn't hit the same as if you were meeting someone in a romantic context in real life. Maybe partially this is subjective, right? Like I can see into that. But I feel like in real life when you meet someone, you get like tone, you get body language, timing, chemistry.

[00:14:01]You get all of that at once. Versus on an app, you're basically running off of someone's like five pictures that they picked themselves or like maybe they don't have any good pictures or they're bad at like writing a funny bio. And then even if you do match with this person, it's just texting, right? It's just like texting back and forth. It's so low effort, which means that it's also really easy for either side of you to drop, right? Because there's no social pressure to reply. Therefore, there's no accountability. Even ghosting is easier on a dating app than like other forms of texting because you literally can just like unmatch them and then they just like cannot message you again. Like they can't contact you again, which means that people are more likely to treat the conversation as optional, like in a way that you wouldn't really do in real life, which means that even if you were like a good match, it likely it won't turn into anything. So once you consider all of that as well, yes apps massively increase your chances of finding someone compatible, but at the same time they also kind of massively increase the chance that nothing is actually going to happen after that. So the math we did at the beginning isn't wrong per se, but it also isn't the whole picture of how it is to use a dating app. So up until now, we were only calculating the chance that someone is compatible with you, right?

[00:15:11]So to remind you, compatibility here means another person that could realistically actually be right with you long term. So for example, they share the same values as you, you're attracted to them, your personalities go well together, maybe they're the same religion as you, if that's something important to you. Basically, all the metrics that make it so that this person is actually viable for you as a long-term partner. But now we're going to change the question, right? So instead of asking are they compatible, we're going to ask what's the chance that a random person you see actually turns into a date. And as mentioned before, it's not as easy as it looks on the app because it's like there's many steps that need to go right. Right. So you first have to see someone on the app, right? And you have to swipe right on them. Like you have to like them.

[00:15:54]That person then needs to swipe right on you and you actually have to match. One of you has to text the other person and then the other person actually has to respond. the conversation then has to like actually like go back and forth and then go somewhere and for that to actually turn into a date. So in order to find what's the probability that one profile actually turns into a date, what we need to do is we need to multiply together every step that has to go right in order for that to happen. So the formula looks something like this and we're going to go through each of these variables in turn, right? So starting with P, this is basically the same as before. The probability that a random person you see is actually compatible with you, right? So, we're going to say that that's about 1%. So, 0.01. Q like here is basically if someone is compatible with you, what's the chance that you actually swipe right on them on the app? Because you don't swipe right on everywhere, right? Even if they're a good match for you because maybe their photos are bad or like their bio is not that good or something. So, in reality, some of the people that could be compatible with you are probably going to like slip through even though if you met them, you would like really like them, right? But obviously, I'm going to counter the fact that it's probably more than likely that you would swipe right on someone compatible with you since their profile, even if it's not perfect, is still probably going to give you some indication of them as a person and like whether or not you would get along with them or like at least whether or not you'd be attracted to them. So, let's say that the probability that you swipe right on them is 60%. So, 0.6. And then moving on to Q match. This is basically if you swipe right on this person, what's the chance that they also swipe right on you and you guys actually match on the app. Again, this isn't guaranteed, right? So, let's say for this we're going to put 30%. So, 0.3 r is basically the reply/ the engagement rate. So, what that means is even if you match with this person, what's the chance that that actually turns into a conversation? Because a lot of matches just kind of sit in your inbox and like no one talks to each other. So let's say for that we're going to put 20% or 0.2.

[00:17:53]And then finally C is conversion to date. So what that means is even if you're talking to this person, what's the chance that you are actually going to meet them in real life? So let's say for that it's about 14% or 0.14. So what we're doing here is we're taking one random profile that you see on the app and we're multiplying it by the probability that it survives every single step of that process. Right? So if you multiply all of that together, you get about 0.00 00054, which is 0.005%.

[00:18:26]So, what that means is the chance that any one profile you see on a dating app actually turns into a date is likeing insanely low. Like, it's not zero, but it it's a lot. It's like 0.00005.

[00:18:41]And sure, you're seeing a lot of people on the app, right? So, let's go with what we said earlier and say you're seeing 500 profiles a week, right? But even with that, your chance of getting at least one date that week out of the 500 profiles you see, if you want to do that and you apply this formula, right?

[00:18:57]Your chance of getting at least one date per week if you swipe on 500 people is only about 2.5%. So, we're going to compare that to real life, right? So, we're going to keep the same assumption that 1% of the population is compatible with you, right? But the process is slightly different in real life. So in real life, the steps would kind of be like you see someone, you actually talk to them, the conversation between the two of you like continues and then like it turns to a date, right? So just like before, we're going to write this out as a formula, right? So it looks like this.

[00:19:26]So P is the same as a four. It's compatibility. And also just to be clear, when I use the word compatibility here, we've already included things like whether or not this person is single, whether they're attracted to people of your gender, all of that, because that's all basically like baked into whether or not they would be compatible with you, right? So that's already baked into this probability and that probability is 0.01 or 1%. Q approach here basically means if someone is compatible with you, what's the chance that you actually talk to them because in real life you're not like approaching every single person, right? So let's say that that's about 30% or 0.3. And I know immediately someone in the comments right now is going to be like, well, I I I would never talk to 30 people in a week. Yeah, I know that's kind of the point because this isn't describing what people actually do, right? is describing what would happen if you were as active in real life as you were on the app, right?

[00:20:16]Because a lot of the reason that people use apps is because it's too scary to do the same thing in real life because on the app you're just like swiping on hundreds of people. So you're already like swiping, matching, messaging people. So this is just making the comparison fair, right? So if you put the same amount of effort in real life, how would it change? So we're just using the same amount of effort in different environments. And then R here is basically once you actually start talking to this person, what's the chance that that turns into a real conversation? Like the odds that this person is like receptive to speaking to you. And in real life, this is much higher because you already have context and tone and body language. So for that, let's say it's about 80%, so 0.8. I know some of you is going to say that that's really high, but we're going to address that later on. So just keep watching for now. And then C here is the chance that the conversation turns into a date. And again, this is much higher than on an app. So for this, let's use 60% or 0.6.

[00:21:08]Again, the 60% figure here is something that I saw from studies that other people have done. That number comes from events and real life dating data. So don't take it as a universal constant.

[00:21:17]It's just a rough estimate that shows how much higher followth through tends to be in real life compared to apps.

[00:21:23]Again, if you think it's too high, just keep watching. I'm going to address that later on in the video. So if you multiply out all of the figures in that formula, right? The chance that one initial encounter ends up becoming a date after all of the steps in real life is about 0.14%.

[00:21:39]Which is already much higher than on the app. And if you want to figure out your odds of getting at least one date in a week, then we apply the same formula as before. But basically, your chance of getting at least one date in a week if you're doing it in real life is about 13.4%. Now, I know someone in the comments is already arguing with the exact numbers that I used. So I actually tested this with a range of different assumptions, right? So for example, lowering the percentages for the success rate in real life or changing the conversion rates. You can see all of that on the breakdown on screen. And then for all these variations in the range, I then figure out the maximum and the minimum odds for the app versus approaches in real life. So now what you can see in the table is that the minimum weekly odds on the app are 0.09% while the maximum weekly odds are 10.2%.

[00:22:27]And then for the real life approaches, the minimum odds are 0.02% while the max odds are 38.1%. So what that means is that the app tends to cluster in a narrower range which means that success rate is going to be more consistent but the upside like the maximum amount is also going to be limited versus in real life it's much more volatile because it can be worse than the app as you can see from the numbers but it's it's by like 0.7 percentage points. But the upside in real life is also dramatically better than the app because your max goes from like 10% on an app to like 38% in real life. So what you can draw from that pattern is generally the app gives you more people and more exposure and therefore more chances to find someone compatible with you. But even though the app gives you more chances at the start, once you account for everything that has to go right after that initial encounter, both your per person success rate and your overall chance of getting a date is most likely going to be lower than if you did the same thing in real life. Therefore, the app wins at showing you more potential dates or like potential matches, but it loses at turning it into anything substantial afterward. So, why did I make this video? One reason is I think because dating apps feel like they should work better than they actually do like mathematically, logically. Everything about them suggests that you should be if you use an app be able to find someone like faster, easier, more efficiently, but then once you actually download it and you use it, it feels like it doesn't really do anything. Like things are almost happening. That's like a feeling I get a lot when you like almost and then nothing happens. I feel like that's a very common experience that people have when you're on an app like, "Oh my god, I matched with this person and they're perfect and they're so attractive and they're so full of potential and then like they either don't message you back or you message back and forth and then it falls through and you never meet them in real life and it's just that repeated ad infinitum."

[00:24:23]And I feel like anyone that does that for long enough, you're going to start wondering, is it just me or is that actually that the app is ultimately not that good at securing dates for you? And I think the answer is kind of annoying, but it's probably a little bit of both because if you think about it, the app isn't lying to you. Like they are showing you more people. But at the same time, it's also putting you in a situation where a lot of the connections that you like have were never going to turn into anything anyway, but you get hopeful that it would because of the volume on the app. And so you do a lot of like almost dating. And the message of this video is I don't think that you should be like deleting every app. Like if it's something that has personally worked for you or if you found success off of it, then awesome. Like onethird of relationships nowadays start on apps people have investigated. So clearly it does work for some people, but the numbers are also not going to be as strong as they look on the surface. And it also means that at the same time, you probably shouldn't take the outcome of apps that seriously or like as a moral arbiter of you and your value as a person. Because at the end of the day, what I really want to say is I wanted to talk about it like how the app makes you feel like there are a lot of options, but in reality, the app is actually more similar to traditional dating than you think it is in the sense that it's reallying hard to find someone, you know, like but that's also what makes it so that if you do find someone, it ising special and you should feel like they're special because the one thing that the app does which I don't like is that it makes everyone feel like there's an abundance of choic around you when if you go to do the math, there actually isn't. So, treasure the person that you're with regardless of how you met them because the odds either way were not in your favor. Thank you for watching this video. I hope you enjoyed it. Or if it was a Debbie Downer, I'm so sorry. If you like this video, then you should subscribe. I've made tons of relationship videos. Um, I've also made some like other more fun videos which you should check out right