Bumble, the women-first dating app, has released its annual dating trends for 2024. Buble gathered the insights from a survey of 25,000 single people who were asked to identify trends in dating and relationships for the coming year.
While 2023 was about “loving beyond your type” and setting preferred boundaries with partners, 2024 is predicted to be the year of focusing on one’s “self”. Trends have found people looking inward to see what they value and want from relationships. One hopes this means swaying away from a strive for perfection and valuing self-acceptance and emotional vulnerability instead.
Bumble calls it the “year of self” which is surrounded by an air of optimism and clarity, with more than 59% of the women surveyed agreeing that they know exactly what they want from their love lives. The other predictions make for an interesting insight into people’s takeaways from modern dating and “being on the app”.
Samarpita Samaddar, Bumble’s India Communication Director said, “Cultural conversations around misogyny, women’s rights, and social issues, that are intertwined with our dating lives, left many exhausted this year. This has impacted the way people want to date and people are feeling more empowered in their sense of self.”
What can we expect from dating in 2024?
Singles are now expecting their partners to care and actively engage in social issues that matter to them. According to Bumble, 1 in 4 people say it’s more attractive when a partner engages in social causes and 1 in 3 agree that it’s a turn-off when a partner is ignorant about societal and human rights issues. Alongside this, Bumble users have betterment burnout and want to rebel against the constant struggle to self-improve and look or feel perfect. ‘Perfection’ is a myth and 2 out of 3 women are actively seeking out happiness by being exactly the way they are here and now. So, a better partner would be someone who does not try to change the other.
Another non-negotiable is emotional intimacy. Security, safety and understanding in a relationship when paired with the right grade of emotional intimacy, make a connection more attractive than physical attributes, according to 35% of surveyors.
Open-hearted masculinity is another important takeaway from this prediction. This time men have expressed the need to express their vulnerabilities and not stay restricted to gender roles. This exciting show of ‘ken-ergy’ has left 26% of male surveyors feeling positive about their mental health and relationships.
Singles have also predicted that a shared love for sports would rule the dating trends next year. 30% of Indians want to attend sports events together (unsurprisingly primarily cricket and football), while 73% proudly include a sports interest badge on their profiles.
Finally, most singles now feel empowered in their ability to ‘slow down’ and prioritise their mental health, even when it comes to dating. This might mean reframing our dating choices and actively ‘slow-dating’ so that there’s time for both love and self-care. So going into the next year, you might want to take things slow when it comes to matters of the heart and be deterred if anyone were to treat dating as a chore.
“It’s exciting to see people now increasingly want to show up as authentic versions of themselves. We predict that 2024 will bring in a year of the self, leading to a new clarity about what they want in their romantic lives,” Samaddar added.
