SHE was swiped off her, err, finger.
So said 21-year-old Far Eastern University student Kaye Ann Luansin who used the Tinder app and ultimately found Ezhil Jade Soriano, 22.
“I just used Tinder to know if this application really works for everybody,” Luansin said.
It was in July last year that Luansin swiped her finger left and right on her handheld device and chose eight men to chat with over Tinder.
“How are you?” began their conversation, began with each asking how the other’s day went. They talked until both became sleepy. This, Luansin said, became a routine.
However, Luansin and Soriano didn’t meet until after the latter broke up with his girlfriend of six years.
“It was very difficult to ask him to go out because he had a girlfriend. I just let things be because I’m still meeting many guys on Tinder,” she said.
But after months of chatting, Soriano asked her to go out and finally meet in person.
They met almost every night over coffee until they agreed in November to become more than friends and chat mates.
And like Junela Manalang, a 20-year-old pharmacy student from the University of Santo Tomas, Luansin stopped using Tinder.
“I already met my match,” Manalang said of her boyfriend, Mitchell Mesina, a 21-year-old student from the De La Salle University.
Like Luansin, Manalang began using Tinder in July last year. She stopped using it last October.
After meeting in person, Manalang said they continued using the app to chat. But they also began having romantic dinners.
I never thought using the app would lead to something serious, according to her.
“I just wanted to kill time,” she said on her reason for using Tinder.
According to the Global Web Index (GWI), as of the first quarter of the year, 31 percent of Internet users visit online-dating sites while, 6 percent use location-based dating application.
The GWI report added that of the 5 million Tinder users, 38 percent are aged between 16 and 24. Forty-five percent, on the other hand, are between 25 and 34.
The GWI also said that 54 percent of Tinder users are single, 30 percent are married, 12 percent are in a relationship, while 3 percent are divorced or widowed.
While Tinder is technically an online-chatting app, it became a platform for dating in real time, according to Manalang.
Using online applications should not be the first and only option to look for love, she said.
“It’s not important how two people began their relationship. What matters is their intention and courage to sustain it.”
For her, the constant chatting over apps like Tinder helped in developing her and hear beau’s feelings toward each other.
Manalang and Luansin, indeed, let their fingers do the talking.
Paula Tuazon
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