Over a year later and finally, many Chicago singles are fully vaccinated and ready to get back out there, in person, and start dating.
Apps like Hinge, Tinder, Match and Bumble are offering special incentives to people who roll up their sleeves, including badges showing vaccination status and free access to premium content. BLK and Chispa will boost profiles of those who are vaccinated, to make them more visible to potential matches. And OKCupid will even let users filter out potential partners based on whether they’ve gotten a vaccine.
The White House says the apps will also direct users to learn how to get vaccinated, including connecting them with educational materials and information on how to find the nearest vaccination site.
With incentives swirling, does this mean more people will get vaccinated in hopes of matching with a future potential partner?
One thing is for sure, with dating app use increase the past year, it’s safe to say dating online isn’t going to be affected by the pandemic ending and people dating in person again.
Priti Joshi, vice president of marketing strategy and operations at Bumble, has the data to back up the popularity of dating apps during the pandemic.
“Online dating has been widely normalized for some time, but I think that this time of social distancing really put a spotlight on the tools and platforms that help people feel connected to others without having to meet IRL,” Joshi said in an email. “For example, Bumble’s Voice Call and Video Chat feature had a nearly 70% increase in use after the State of Emergency was declared in the US last spring.”
With a dating pool as massive as the one Chicago has, it’s hard to limit yourself to only vaccinated singles. After all, many people assume statistics are on their side (Chicago Covid cases have been dwindling, now at positive rate of .4%, as the number of vaccinated rises, now at 55% vaxxed) and won’t limit themselves to dating only the vaccinated.
In fact, 65% of Chicago singles say they won’t stick to dating only vaccinated singles, which shows they trust in the science behind the vaccinations.
Alison Baker, a 12-year resident of Chicago, is fully vaccinated as of May and says she has already been on 2 in-person dates and is looking forward to a summer of dating.
“I had already timed out my first in-person dates for the weeks after I was fully vaccinated, according to CDC standards, at least. I was a bit nervous to see if I would get butterflies for someone again, that spark that hits you when you meet someone you’re already interested in. I sort of knew what to expect since I video dated both of them before agreeing to meet in person,” said Baker.
Tinder and Bumble were quick to roll out video-chat features when the pandemic first started, and they highly contributed to dating app downloads and usage.
Sixty percent of those surveyed said they will continue to use dating apps going into summer, as much as they were in spring.
It seems that it will indeed be the summer of fucks for many Chicago singles.
No vaccine? No problem.
This article originally appeared on ElyShouldKnow
