Swipe right for surgery: How online dating fuels cosmetic procedures among women
ETimes November 16, 2025 01:39 AM
Finding a potential partner in the modern day is easy. You register on a dating app, swipe what you like, and tada! About 323 million people use dating apps globally. While these apps have made dating easier, they surely come at a cost.
A new study by University of South Australia researchers found that that may not have a happy ending. The findings of the study are published in the journal
Computers in Human Behavior.
Swipe right for surgery
While dating apps may help you find the one, they also set unrealistic beauty standards, the researchers found. The new study sheds light on how female users of dating apps are far more likely to undergo cosmetic procedures and digitally alter their looks on screen than non-users.
These apps are mainly about a person’s appearance. So the swipes have a role in influencing 20% of women to change their looks via dermal fillers and anti-wrinkle injections in particular, the researchers found. Though the increasing popularity of dating apps has reduced the stigma of using them to find love, it has a downside, provisional psychologist Naomi Burkhardt, who led the study and is a UniSA Bachelor of Psychology (Honours) graduate, said.
“The visual nature of dating apps, which prioritise photo-based profiles, places significant pressure on users to present themselves in an idealised manner that is not genuine,” Burkhardt added.
How online dating sets unrealistic beauty standards
To understand the impact of dating apps on women’s self-esteem, the researchers surveyed 308 Australian women aged 18 to 72. Nearly half of them had used a dating app in the past two years, and one in five reported undergoing at least one cosmetic procedure.
They also noticed that women who use dating apps have a more positive attitude towards cosmetic surgery compared to others. Along with the pressure it places on appearance, dating apps could also be partly responsible for an increase in overall body dissatisfaction , eating disorders, anxiety, and poor self-esteem among women.
Though previous research has linked social media use in general to an increased acceptance of cosmetic surgery, there was no data on the role of dating apps specifically. “Introducing more personality-based matching algorithms could also be considered to reduce the emphasis on physical looks, and apps could offer built-in body-image interventions such as self-compassion exercises to mitigate the pressures to alter one’s appearance,” UniSA co-author Lauren Conboy said. He emphasised the importance of interventions to address the psychological impacts of dating apps.
Online dating apps are booming, with dating website eHarmony predicting that by 2040 more than
“Hopefully this research can guide future studies to develop interventions to improve the authenticity of dating app use, as well as support practitioners to better identify the motivations for women wanting to change their appearance,” UniSA co-author Dr John Mingoia said.
