OK Cupid do your best, while I Bumble around Tindering for my love, a hook-up or a FWB…!

This presentation will describe the rationale for the ‘COVID-19: Dating Apps, Social Connections, Loneliness and Mental Health in a pandemic’ project. Prior to the pandemic, dating apps have become an integral form for many citizens in society to elicit emotional, sexual, and intimate relationships and connections. However, little is known about the use, impacts, barriers, and enablers to using dating apps, pre-pandemic and even more so since the pandemic. However, given the phenomenal rise of dating apps, accessible for download via iTunes and Google Play Store, coupled with citizens young and old turning to alternative ways of finding a connection and/or companion, dating apps are here to stay.

Dr Deborah Morgan is a senior research officer in the Centre for Innovative Ageing at Swansea University who specialises in loneliness and social isolation in later life. She has a background in social gerontology, sociology and health and social care. Deborah’s PhD focused on transitions in loneliness and social isolation in later life. Her research interests include older adults, loneliness and social isolation health/social inequalities, disability and chronic illness, and new ageing populations.

Dr Hannah R. Marston is a Research Fellow in the Health and Wellbeing Strategic Research Area at The Open University, UK. She gained her PhD in Virtual Reality and Gerontology from Teesside University, UK in 2010, focusing on digital game habits of older people. Her research is both inter-and-multi-disciplinary intersecting across the fields of gerontechnology, social sciences, and technology.