“Why are you on Tinder if this isn’t what you wanted?” Dating apps as digital brokers of sexual activity in the college hookup sexual market

Abstract

Scholars have argued that college hookup culture is facilitated by the unique physical and social context of college campuses and that young adults are increasingly using dating apps to initiate hookups. This has inspired calls for researchers to examine the digital interactions that precede face-to-face hookups. In this study, we used a “sexual market” framework to investigate the processes by which college hookups are “digitally brokered” via dating apps. Using data from focus groups conducted with 49 college students representing diverse sexual identities, we analyzed dating app users’ stories of their transitions from digital interactions to face-to-face meetups with matches. Participants discussed three types of consent that matches attempt to digitally broker: app-implied consent, colloquial consent, and (re)negotiated consent. We discuss problems that arise when users attempt to redeem these forms of digitally brokered consent during face-to-face meetups and make recommendations for sexual assault prevention efforts.

Keywords

college dating app hook up sexual consent

College hookup culture, once thought to be facilitated by the unique context of college campuses, is becoming digitally mediated. Hookups may be defined as casual sexual activity with no expectation of romantic obligation between partners (Bogle, 2008; Paul et al., 2000). Past scholarship has suggested that hookup culture thrives on college campuses because students acquire new independence from family while finding themselves in proximity to a large pool of sexually available peers (Allison and Risman, 2014; Bogle, 2008; Wade, 2017). Yet, the importance of campus context may be diminishing, as young adults are increasingly using dating apps to find hookup partners (Anderson et al., 2020; Paul, 2022). This has inspired calls for researchers to examine the dynamics of an emerging “hybrid hookup script” spanning both digital and face-to-face exchanges between partners (Christensen, 2021; LeFebvre, 2018).

Research on digital interactions between mixed-gender dating app matches has noted a “missing discourse of consent,” reflected by men’s messages to women that include commands for sex and threats of violence (Thompson, 2018). Yet, by focusing exclusively on messages conveyed through digital interactions, this important work does not explore implications of the missing discourse of consent as matches transition between digital to face-to-face exchanges. Using a sexual market framework (Ellingson et al., 2004), we investigated processes by which college hookups are “digitally brokered” via dating apps. Focusing on users’ transitions from online interactions to face-to-face meetups, we identified three types of digitally brokered consent: app-implied consent, colloquial consent, and (re)negotiated consent. We discuss problems that arise when users attempt to redeem these forms of digitally brokered consent without verifying terms.

Contemporary dating app experiences: race, gender, and sexuality

A 2020 report from the Pew Research Center indicated that 30% of American adults have used a dating app, marking a substantial increase since 2013, when 11% of American adults had used such an app (Anderson et al., 2020). The authors of the report noted that dating app use is fairly equal among White, African American, and Hispanic adults. However, usage is higher than average among young adults (18–29 years) and LGBTQ+ adults, as half of Americans in each of these (overlapping) groups have used a dating app. Thus, college students, particularly LGBTQ+ students, constitute a group that is particularly likely to use dating apps.

Research has indicated dating apps are convenient for people whose pool of potential partners is small or difficult to identify, and college students seeking same-gender hookups are more likely to use online spaces to find matches than students seeking other-gender matches (Kuperberg and Padgett, 2015, 2017; Paul, 2022). In fact, dating app usage is so common among LGBTQ+ daters that a systematic review of the research on dating apps indicated this is the most studied group in the literature; research has only begun to focus on straight daters, as app usage increased among this group in recent years (Castro and Barrada, 2020).

Despite the equal likelihood of different racial/ethnic groups to use dating apps, users typically engage in assortative dating—or the tendency to pair with people who are similar to themselves—along racial/ethnic lines (Ranzini et al., 2022). This pattern is evident among both straight and LGBTQ+ dating app users and is especially evident among White users, who commonly exclude potential matches from minoritized racial and ethnic groups (Curington et al., 2021; Forbes and Stacey, 2022; Hanson, 2022; Peck et al., 2021). However, when White users do seek and match with users from other racial/ethnic groups, they often do so with the intention of fetishizing them, or sexually objectifying them based on their minoritized identity (Banks et al., 2024; Stacey and Forbes, 2022).

Fetishization is also a common concern for LGBTQ+ women. Since LGBTQ+ women do not have as many niche apps available as LGBTQ+ men, they often find themselves dating in the same digital spaces as straight men, which poses the contradictory tasks of signaling their sexual identity to prospective matches while also guarding their identity from straight men who may harass them (Ferris and Duguay, 2020; Smith, 2022). In fact, reviews of the literature indicate that harassment and fetishization are common experiences among straight women and LGBTQ+ dating app users (Filice et al., 2022; Gewirtz-Meydan et al., 2024). Women and LGBTQ+ dating app users often report experiencing forms of harassment such as receiving unwanted messages that reflect men’s presumed entitlement to sex, requests for nude photos, and receipt of unsolicited explicit images such as “dick pics” (Berkowitz et al., 2021; Comunello et al., 2021; Dietzel, 2022; Gillett, 2023; Lee, 2019; Shaw, 2016; Thompson, 2018; Timmermans and Courtoise, 2018). Thus, dating apps do not always facilitate equitable interactions between matches.

Dating apps as digital brokers in the college hookup sexual market

The growing popularity of dating apps has resulted in a “hybrid hookup script” that involves sexual and romantic interactions originating online and then transitioning to face-to-face scenarios (Christensen, 2021). As such, scholarship on the initiation of sexual activity/relationships should pay attention to the digital interactions that take place before face-to-face meetups (LeFebvre, 2018). We argue that these interactions constitute a form of “digital brokering” in the college hookup sexual market.

Dating apps can be conceptualized as brokers of sexual activity because they are spaces where sexual matches are forged. Using a sexual market metaphor, Ellingson et al. (2004) argue that brokers “act as coordinators for individuals within the same sex market” (p. 18). According to Ellingson and colleagues, some brokers play a mediating role in forging partnerships because they facilitate matching, but this is not their primary purpose (e.g. parks, religious institutions, workplaces, neighborhoods). Others play a direct role because matching is one of their primary purposes (e.g. dance clubs, LGBTQ+ bars).

Since their primary purpose is matching users, hookup apps arguably function as direct brokers in sexual markets. Yet, these digital brokers are unique from many physical spaces that have traditionally functioned as brokers. By relying on computer algorithms for matching, digital technologies such as dating apps remove the mediating role of social networks (e.g. friends, family, acquaintances) in brokering connections (Rosenfeld et al., 2019; Rosenfeld and Thomas, 2012) and dating app users’ trust in these algorithms increases with use (Hu and Wang, 2024). This has implications for the nature of brokered pairings. Whereas dating app users tend to view traditionally brokered matches as potential relationships that need to be nurtured, they view digitally brokered matching as a game to be played (Huang et al., 2022). In fact, a number of studies have documented the game-like nature of dating apps (Berkowitz et al., 2021; Sobieraj and Humphreys, 2022).

This gaming approach to dating app matching is facilitated by technological “affordances” (i.e. ways that features can produce concrete actions) that both facilitate and constrain the matching process (Gibson, 1986; Ronzhyn et al., 2023). Affordances can shape the ways that users present their gendered identities as binary or fluid (depending on the range of categorical options that are available), select partners in a careful or hurried manner (depending on whether quick screening/swiping is encouraged), and uphold or subvert traditional sexual scripts (depending on gendered rules of initiation and whether sexualized photos or subjective narratives are encouraged) (Christensen, 2021; Comunello et al., 2021; MacLeod and McArthur, 2019; Pruchniewska, 2020; Sobieraj and Humphreys, 2021).

Elaborating on the latter example, an emerging body of research indicates that traditional sexual scripts predominate interactions on dating apps such that, in mixed-gender matches, men typically “make the first move” (i.e. initiate contact with matches), women’s value is reduced to their beauty and sexual propriety, and women are the targets of misogyny/harassment reflecting men’s presumed entitlement to sex from those who use dating apps (Berkowitz et al., 2021; Comunello et al., 2021; Gillett, 2023; Lee, 2019; Shaw, 2016; Thompson, 2018; Timmermans and Courtoise, 2018). Even in the case of Bumble, an app that aims to empower women by necessitating that they initiate interaction after matching with men, users may revert to traditional scripts or report that empowerment is heteronormative, superficial, or “forced” because the app was designed to protect women seeking men and women do not freely choose to make the first move (Bivens and Hoque, 2018; Sobieraj and Humphreys, 2021; Young and Roberts, 2023).

Thompson (2018) argues that these patterns reflect a missing discourse of consent in exchanges between dating app matches. Sexual consent can be defined as “freely given verbal or nonverbal communication of a feeling of willingness” to engage in sexual activity (Hickman and Muehlenhard, 1999: 259). According to Thompson, men’s dating app messages to women often circumvent the negotiation of consent by including “harassment and objectifying speech perhaps to try to humiliate women and communicate that, in the online sexual marketplace, women should ‘know’ their place is to be subservient to men’s sexual desires” (p. 84). Despite Thompson’s documentation of this missing discourse of consent in dating app user’s interactions with matches, there is evidence that some users believe dating apps grant the requisite technological affordances to negotiate sexual consent (Zytko et al., 2021).

For example, some users engage in “consent signaling,” an implicit process in which they “infer and imply consent to sexual activity without any verbal or overt confirmation” (Zytko et al., 2021: 9). From their interviews with dating app users, Zytko et al. found that participants perceived apps to be designed for the purpose of discovering sexual partners and rapidly progressing to sexual encounters. Thus, participants assumed matches were interested in sex and that agreement to meet up constituted agreement to sexual activity. This assumption can be problematic, as past research has indicated people use dating apps for a variety of reasons including “gaming” (e.g. to alleviate boredom), meeting friends, building social networks/capital, forming intimate relationships, and seeking casual sex (Berkowitz et al., 2021; Hsiao and Dillahunt, 2017; Petrychyn et al., 2020; Sobieraj and Humphreys, 2022; Timmermans and Courtoise, 2018; Timmermans and De Calwe, 2017). Thus, not every dating app user is looking for a sexual encounter.

In some cases, participants in Zytko et al.’s (2021) study indicated that they used dating apps to actively negotiate affirmative consent. Users who engaged in this process viewed dating apps as sexual consent software; they reviewed other users’ profiles to look for content that expressed interest in sex, overtly consented to sexual activities before meeting up, and verbally confirmed consent when meeting face-to-face. Using dating apps to negotiate sexual consent can be useful, as some research suggests digital communications about sexual activity and consent can be easier, or less inhibiting, than face-to-face communications about these topics (Rubinsky, 2018; Wignall et al., 2020).

Just as digital technology can aid in the negotiation of consent, it can be problematic when partners do not understand consent as fluid and revocable. Treem and Leonardi (2013) proposed that digital technology may facilitate or constrain interactions through the following affordances: visibility (i.e. users can see content about others), persistence (i.e. content remains accessible), editability (i.e. users can cultivate/refine content), and association (i.e. following other users’ content and vice versa). Thus, users seeking to protect themselves from sexual assault allegations may rely on these affordances to broker sexual activity and obtain consent in a visible space (Kettrey et al., 2024). Alternatively, users seeking to protect themselves from assault may find that affordances of dating apps permit them to express sexual limits in a visible space, which may decrease chances of ambiguity. In either case, terms of negotiations brokered via dating apps may not necessarily transfer to face-to-face meetups.

The current study

In this study, we investigated the ways that sexual activity is brokered via dating apps. We specifically explored the following research questions:

RQ1: How do dating app users progress to face-to-face meetups with matches?

RQ2: How do dating app users negotiate sexual activity with matches whom they plan to meet face-to-face?

We believe our analysis is unique from past research on negotiations of sexual activity between dating app matches because, rather than strictly focusing on digital interactions, we pay special attention to the transition from digital interactions to face-to-face meetups.

Data and method

Sample

Data for this study came from focus groups that we conducted with a convenience sample of students at a large land grant university in the southeastern United States. Significant to this study, the university is a predominantly white institution (PWI), with only 21% of students identifying with a minorized race/ethnicity. In addition, the university has experienced anti-LGBTQ+ incidents in recent years, indicating that LGBTQ+ students are likely to feel minoritized on campus. These dynamics provide the opportunity to study the brokering of matches and negotiation of sexual activity between privileged and minoritized students.

We conducted focus groups, as opposed to individual interviews, because focus groups can encourage participants to talk about sexual topics, as disclosures by more confident participants encourage others to follow suit (Frith, 2000). In other words, participants may view focus groups as less intrusive than individual interviews, with peer interactions setting participants at ease and establishing a norm of disclosure (Överlien et al., 2005). Thus, we expected to obtain richer descriptions of experiences with dating apps in a group, rather than individual, setting.

Past research with dating app users has employed both interviews (Broeker, 2023; Christensen, 2021) and focus groups (Comunello et al., 2021; Lykens et al., 2019; Newlands et al., 2022), obtaining rich data from each method. In their study of the “gaming” aspect of dating apps, Sobieraj and Humphreys (2022) used both individual interviews and focus groups, arguing that the latter are best for socially oriented topics. As Comunello et al. explain, focus group interactions “contribute to the emergence of scripts and representations that tend to be generally experienced in a more implicit way” (p. 1144). Thus, we expected focus groups to facilitate the articulation of dating app norms that may be evident in collective conversations, but not in individual interviews.

Recruitment entailed the distribution of flyers that were posted around campus and circulated via course webpages advertising a “study on dating/hookup apps.” Interested students scanned a QR code on the flyer that took them to the study’s consent form and an eligibility screening survey that was administered via Qualtrics. To be eligible for the study, participants must have indicated that they were current students (undergraduate or graduate) at the university where the study was being conducted and that they had experience using dating/hookup apps. Eligible participants were asked to enter their demographic information (i.e. age, racial/ethnic identity, gender identity, and sexual identity), university email address, scheduling availability, and focus group preference (i.e. matched gender/sexuality, mixed gender/sexuality, or no preference).

Between September and October of 2022, a total of 49 students participated in 1 of 10 scheduled focus groups, each consisting of 3–8 participants. The number of participants in each group was a product of participants’ preferences (i.e. participants selected the group that met their scheduling and group gender/sexuality composition preferences). We scheduled a total of 10 group sessions, at which point recruitment began to diminish. Discussions during regular team meetings suggested we reached data saturation after conducting approximately five group sessions, at which point participants did not introduce many new patterns, but did provide new examples of patterns noted in previous groups.

Five of our 10 focus groups consisted of cisgender women, 4 were mixed-gender, and 1 consisted of cisgender men. One group consisted of straight participants; the remaining nine were mixed-sexuality. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 33, and 41 (83.67%) identified as White (6 of these 41 participants identified with more than 1 race/ethnicity). Thirty-six participants (73.47%) identified as cisgender women and 13 (26.53%) identified as cisgender men. Twenty-eight participants (57.14%) identified as straight and 21 (42.86%) identified as LGBTQ+ (i.e. gay, bisexual, queer, pansexual, and unsure were identities that participants endorsed). The racial demographics of our sample are consistent with the composition of the student population on the campus where we conducted our study, which is a PWI. In comparison to campus demographics, LGBTQ+ students are over-represented in our sample. Yet, this is consistent with research indicating LGBTQ+ people are more likely to use dating apps than their straight/cisgender counterparts (Kuperberg and Padgett, 2015, 2017; Paul, 2022).

Data collection

Focus group sessions were conducted via Zoom and lasted from approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes to 2 hours. Each focus group session was facilitated by the first author, a faculty member at the university, and co-facilitated by one of five student co-authors. The student authors were enrolled in a small applied research course under the supervision of the first author. Co-facilitating focus groups was part of the student authors’ training and grade for the course. Given the discrepancy in experience between the first author and the student authors, the first author assumed responsibility for facilitating the groups and keeping the sessions on topic. Student co-facilitators largely observed, but asked follow-up questions when appropriate.

During each session, the facilitator followed an interview guide that posed questions asking about participants’ “thoughts and experiences pertinent to [dating] apps.” Focus group sessions began with the facilitator asking participants to describe the apps they have used, including their initial reasons for downloading the app. The facilitator then progressed to inquire about digital and face-to-face interactions with matches, covering topics such as sexual intentions, sexual consent, sexual pressure, and so on. The facilitator used an interview guide to ensure that a list of pre-specified topics was addressed in each focus group, but adapted the order and phrasing of questions to accommodate the participants’ flow of conversation.

Participants in our focus groups did not know each other prior to enrolling in the study. However, they were recruited from the same campus and had a shared sense of community. Participants’ names were visible on the Zoom screen alongside their video image, and they often used these to call on and engage with each other. The facilitator and co-facilitators opened each session by acquainting participants with the purpose of the study and reminding them to respect the privacy and confidentiality of other participants in the event that they encounter each other on campus. Although some participants were more talkative than others, the groups built rapport quickly, as evident by nonverbal communication (e.g. laughing, nodding in agreement) and direct engagement with other participants’ comments. Participants connected over shared experiences, elaborating on common stories and exhibiting empathy for each other (e.g. validating degrading experiences, commiserating about the fear of false sexual assault allegations). To encourage this rapport building, the facilitator and co-facilitators often sat back and allowed participants to engage with each other. We also actively read participants’ nonverbal cues and asked those with a visible reaction to a group member’s comment to share their thoughts. Overall, we facilitated the groups with ease, and found most participants to actively engage with one another.

Following the conclusion of each focus group, participants received a $25 Amazon gift regardless of how much or how little they contributed to the conversation. All study methods were approved by Clemson University’s Institutional Review Board.

Researcher reflexivity

The collection and analysis of qualitative data can be influenced by the researchers’ position as an insider or outsider to the topics being studied. As insiders, researchers occupy a “shared experience” position that may grant them special insight regarding the topic being studied while also posing the risk of imposing their own beliefs, perceptions, and biases onto the data (Berger, 2015). As outsiders, researchers who are “unfamiliar with the specific experience under study may approach it from afresh and different viewpoint posing new questions that may lead to innovative directions” but also may not fully comprehend a topic or situation that they have not experienced themselves (Berger, 2015: 227).

Our research team was composed of both insiders and outsiders. As college students with personal experience using dating apps, the student team members could relate to many of the stories that participants shared, as well as understand the language that participants used to convey these stories. Thus, the student authors were able to easily comprehend the nuanced meaning of personal accounts that participants described. Yet, their insider status sometimes led them to accept participants’ comments at face value without delving deep into exploring their nature and meaning. On the contrary, the first author, a faculty member with no experience using dating apps, approached the research project with no personal familiarity with the topic. Thus, the first author did not share the language of participants, but this unfamiliarity led her to probe participants about the meaning behind their expressions.

To illustrate, when participants described colloquial phrases that dating app matches interpret as expressions of consent, student researchers immediately recognized these expressions, as well as their potential consequences during in-person interactions with matches. The first author, however, probed participants to explain the meaning behind these expressions. Ultimately, we believe that the first authors’ outsider position, paired with the student authors’ insider positions, created more productive focus group dialog and more careful data coding.

Data coding

Focus group sessions were recorded via Zoom, transcribed with Otter.ai software, and then checked for accuracy by the student co-authors. Coding of transcripts followed an inductive approach by utilizing methods outlined by Charmaz (2014). This entailed (1) all six authors working independently to identify initial codes through a line-by-line analysis of all transcripts and then (2) collaborating as a team to synthesize these initial codes into focused codes that identify larger themes the initial codes collectively reveal.

After all focus groups were conducted and transcribed, each of the 6 team members independently read all 10 transcripts (100% sample overlap), creating memos containing initial codes that describe the more minute themes that are “provisional, comparative, and grounded in the data” (Charmaz, 2014: 177). Once team members completed initial coding, we followed Charmaz’s guidance and met as a group to compare and consolidate these initial codes to collectively evaluate their fit and usefulness, scrutinizing how “differences among team members may generate new insights” (p. 118). That is, we discussed the initial codes that each member identified, engaged in discussion to select the codes that had more analytical “reach, direction, and centrality” pertinent to our research, and synthesized these into focused codes (p. 141). We worked as a team to actively explore disagreements and achieve consensus via discussion because inductive qualitative research is often concerned with credibility, or whether findings are trustworthy and believable, rather than reliability between coders (Corbin and Strauss, 2015).

To capture the context and nuanced language of focus group conversations, our results include verbatim quotes from participants; any minor editing is noted with ellipses or bracketed text. To ensure the anonymity of participants, while also representing them with personified subjectivity, we refer to all participants with pseudonyms.

Results

Our analysis focused on the use of dating apps to select partners and negotiate sexual activity. From our participants’ comments, we identified two focused codes that address these matters: (1) browsing the digital catalog and (2) transferring digitally brokered consent to the real world. It is important to note that many of the participants in our study reported setting tight geographical filters in their dating app profiles/preferences such that most of their matches were fellow students at their university. In this sense, participants used dating apps to broker sexual activity in their local college hookup market, and most of their comments pertain to their experiences with fellow students.

Browsing the digital catalog

Participants in our focus groups reported using a range of dating apps including Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, Grindr, Plenty of Fish, HER, and so on. They briefly touched on the different affordances of these apps, with Tinder being the “hookup app,” Hinge being the “relationship app,” and Bumble being more woman-centered. However, Tinder was the most frequent app that participants reported using, and group conversations largely defaulted to experiences with this app. In fact, at times, participants seemingly treated “Tinder” as synonymous with “dating app.”

Importantly, participants in our sample reported that they were not always seeking sexual partners or romantic relationships when they used these apps, suggesting they do not always intend to enter negotiations of sexual activity. In addition, they frequently screened out matches who posted vulgar content that alluded to sexual intentions too quickly, and they moved interactions with matches off of dating apps to new digital territories that felt safer to navigate. Thus, the participants in our sample often used dating apps for purposes other than negotiating sexual activity, and they were discerning regarding which matches they decided to pursue outside the context of a dating app. As described later in the analysis, this became problematic for participants whose matches assumed sexual activity was a common goal among dating app users.

“Playing Tinder.”

Participants’ reasons for initially downloading a dating app ranged widely, and many were not seriously looking to broker sexual activity with a match. Instead, participants frequently reported “playing Tinder.” Consistent with past research, some participants used dating apps as a game (Berkowitz et al., 2021; Huang et al., 2022; Sobieraj and Humphreys, 2022)—or to seek validation and alleviate boredom. These participants described feelings of emotional validation resulting from obtaining a high number of matches on a dating app (i.e. high number of users swiping to indicate that they find the participant attractive). As William recalled, “I’ll be honest, I was mainly just looking for like attention. I didn’t really expect to meet anyone in person or, like, get anything out of it. I was just kind of doing it for validation” (White, straight, cisgender man). Similarly, Mark described using dating apps as “a confidence boost, especially like Hinge where you can see what people—where people like you first and stuff” (White, gay, cisgender man).

Participants also described using dating apps as a form of group entertainment. For many participants, gaming began during the COVID shutdown when university classes were largely online and students were frequently confined to their dorms and apartments. Playing Tinder was often a group game. Conner described making a drinking game out of it, as follows:

One person throws their phone up on the TV. And if they swipe left on someone, they’re not interested. . . . It’s everyone against the person whose phone is on the TV. And everyone has to take a sip . . . and the person that has their phone, if they want to swipe right they have to chug their drink. (White, straight, cisgender man)

This has implications for the negotiation of sexual activity—or sexual consent—with dating app matches. Participants who described using dating apps for validation, or as part of a drinking game, were arguably not looking for sexual activity. Thus, they found themselves misaligned with matches who were seeking sexual activity via dating apps, which led to uncomfortable situations. One such example is the vulgar sexual messages that many participants reported receiving from matches.

Screening out vulgar matches

Participants in our sample reported that women receive more dating app matches than men. They believed that this burdened women with many matches to screen, and it placed a lot of pressure on men to stand out from other matches. Yet, consistent with previous research, it was not uncommon for men to stand out in a negative way, as the women in our sample reported frequently receiving vulgar content from matches, such as unsolicited “dick pics” or fetishized messages, often via other social media platforms (Berkowitz et al., 2021; Comunello et al., 2021; Dietzel, 2022; Gillett, 2023; Lee, 2019; Shaw, 2016; Thompson, 2018; Timmermans and Courtoise, 2018).

Speaking in generalized terms about the frequency of this vulgarity, Eliza shared, “We’ll have, like, a short conversation. And then, like, you know, I add them on Snap[chat], and then the first thing I open up is an unsolicited dick pic.” The other women in Eliza’s group laughed and nodded affirmatively, and Eliza quipped, “Like, I get that way too much” (White, pansexual, cisgender woman). Women in our sample also reported receiving fetishizing content from matches. At times, such messages fetishized basic aesthetics, such as when a match asked Grace, “Has anyone ever asked to cum on your glasses before?” (White, bisexual, cisgender woman).

More frequently, fetishizing comments targeted participants’ race/ethnicity or sexual identity. Commenting on the former, Kourtney and Luna both attributed the fetishization of women of color to the fact that most of their matches were fellow students at their university, a PWI. Kourtney explained the fetishization of Black women results from “the nature of like, the—which race is predominant here. Because I did transfer from another school . . . and I never had those type of problems when I would link with people” (African American, bisexual, cisgender woman). Similarly, Luna described, “Being in a predominantly White school and being Latina. . . I would get a lot of those messages where it’s like, ‘Oh, like, I need you to come spice my life up’ or something, ‘I need seasoning’” (Latinx, straight, cisgender woman). LGBTQ+ women also reported being fetishized by men who matched with them. Eliza expressed that matches often made assumptions about her sexual interests based on her identity as a pansexual woman. As she relayed, “I get a lot [of matches] that, like [say], I ‘look like I’m into freaky shit.’ So, they’ll be like, ‘Damn, you down to do some freaky shit tonight?’” (White, pansexual, cisgender woman).

Liza and other women in our focus groups noted that they specifically state their intentions and limits in their profiles in an attempt to ward off unwanted sexual attention, but they questioned whether matches actually read or respect these statements. Discussing her disinterest in hookups, Kristen relayed, “you can put—one of the filters is, like, what you’re looking for. So, like, it’ll be like, ‘hookup,’ ‘relationships.’ . . . Do people really look at that? I don’t really know. Probably not” (White, straight, cisgender woman).

Moving to new digital territory

The screening process that participants described indicated some selectivity in the pursuit of dating app matches. When participants decided to engage with matches, they rarely stayed on dating apps for long. Instead, they moved to other digital platforms, believing these are more direct and better conducive to fluid interaction. In this sense, the exact dating app where participants found matches was not particularly important. Hunter explained, “It’s to the point where it’s like, Bumble or Tinder, they’re both going to Snapchat so it’s like, starting places to hunt, but it just moves into the same territory” (White/Latinx, straight, cisgender man).

Past research has indicated that dating app users see the transition from dating apps to more private messaging apps as a sign of interest that is a pivotal move to an in-person meetup (Broeker, 2023). In our study, participants often mentioned security as a reason for moving from dating apps to other social media platforms. They tended to be concerned about being “catfished,” or lured in by someone using a fake identity, and they believed they could verify the identity of matches on other social media platforms. As Mark described his typical initial interaction with a match:

I tend to move it to Snapchat, is where I prefer to move it, for security. And for just like, sort of the surface level social media, they use the same pictures from their social media on their Tinder, usually, or whatever. And so then on Snapchat, you sort of get to see their face if it’s really similar, or if it’s really different, etc. (White, gay, cisgender man)

Although participants reported moving their conversations off dating apps for security purposes, they were also wary of matches who tried to make this transition too soon. Marissa described a recent encounter with a match who “literally said, ‘Can we just go ahead and skip the BS, and I get your Snap?’ Like, that was it” (White, straight, cisgender woman). She explained that it is acceptable to move interactions with a match off of a dating app if “both of y’all are like, kind of vibing,” but if a match asks to move to another platform too quickly then “I just really question, like, their intentions whenever they send that because I don’t know what it means from a guy’s head.”

Stories of matches trying to move interactions off dating apps too soon typically involved a man trying to convince a woman to transition to a new platform. As Eliza explained, “I’ve never had a woman or non-binary person . . . just like, open up with the Snap, like, ‘Hey, add me on Instagram.’ No, it’s always men” (White, pansexual, cisgender woman). It was not uncommon for women in our focus groups to believe that men who moved conversations off dating apps too soon had questionable motives. As Ashley noted, “A lot of times me and my friends noticed that if a guy was wanting to hook up, he’d asked for your Snapchat. If a guy was wanting to pursue something more, he’d asked for your number” (White, straight, cisgender woman). When the facilitator asked why someone would ask for her Snapchat if they wanted to hook up, Ashley elaborated “I think because Snapchat deletes and like there isn’t necessarily a long trace.” Other participants agreed, as Juliana explained, “I just, it’s never anything deep, or meaningful, unless you’re Snapchatting like every second, I don’t think it’s going to be a good conversation” (White, straight, cisgender woman). Demonstrating the different affordances of Snapchat versus text-based technologies, women expressed the general perception that requests to move from a dating app to an image-based social media platform signifies the expectation for superficial interactions, whereas moving from a dating app to text messaging signifies expectations for substantive conversation and meaningful interactions.

Relaying more ominous suspicions, Susan described the tension between wanting to move to Snapchat to verify the identity of her matches with her suspicion that an early request to do so was a precursor to a match’s request for nude photos. As she explained:

In my experience, I wanted to go to Snapchat so that I could make sure that they actually were the people that they were saying that they were on Tinder. So, I could, like, see their faces and make sure they weren’t, like, old or scary. But of course, like, a lot of times it turned, depending on who you were talking to, a lot of times it turned to be, like, “Will you send me nudes?” (White, bisexual, cisgender woman)

Transferring digitally brokered consent to the real world

The manner in which participants browsed the digital catalog of dating app matches highlights an array of intentions that extend beyond the sexual. It also indicates that participants may find their intentions to be misaligned with their matches’ intentions, and they actively screen for such misalignment while interacting with matches on the apps. We asked focus group participants about their discussions of sexual activity, brokered through dating apps and other digital technology, as well as during face-to-face meetups. From their responses, we identified three types of consent that are characteristic of meetups with dating app partners: app-implied consent, colloquial consent (i.e. inferring consent from casual phrases), and (re)negotiated consent.

App-implied consent

In many cases, matches expressed grievance over their perception that participants violated the terms of app-implied consent. That is, these matches seemed to assume that one’s presence on a dating app and/or subsequent agreement to a meetup, entitled them to sexual activity. Eliza described a generalized experience entailing “making out” with a match and deciding she wants to “end it there for the night,” to which her match responds by asking, “Well, then why the fuck did you even come over?” (White, pansexual, cisgender woman).

Commenting on the perceived entitlement associated with app-implied consent, Eliza relayed, “I think with, like, Tinder and hookup apps, it’s—the other person feels a little more entitled towards sexual activity because, like, I’ve had someone ask, like, you know, “Why are you on Tinder if this isn’t what you wanted?” Eliza continued by clarifying that not all matches exhibit such entitlement. Distinguishing between different responses to sexual rejection she elaborated to say, “Um. I mean, some people will be very respectful about it and then other people will be like, ‘We’ll see about that.’ Shit like that. ‘We’ll see how you feel later.’” Having matched with both men and women, Eliza offered that men are more “persistent” and more likely to use lines such as, “we’ll see what happens later.”

Beyond being persistent, some of the women in our focus groups described being called derogatory names such as “slut,” “whore,” “tease,” and “prude” for rejecting a match’s sexual advances. Jana described a typical process entailing a woman saying, “I don’t want to do this” to which her match responds with, “Oh, then you’re a prude. I don’t want to deal with you at all” (White, bisexual/asexual, cisgender woman). Stacy described the irony of being called a slut for setting sexual limits with a match. As she explained:

I’ve had guys say things like calling, saying that you’re a slut or something. That’s, like, I’m literally saying I don’t want to have sex with you. I don’t know how that makes any sense. Or they’ll be like, “Oh, that’s fine. You’re not that cute anyways.” Okay, well, you matched with me so [trails off]. (White, straight, cisgender woman)

Colloquial consent

Participants, particularly women matching with men, frequently mentioned that matches had sought their colloquial consent by digitally transmitting short phrases meant to indicate they were inviting a match to engage in sexual activity. Hence, a match who responded was typically understood to be consenting to sex, regardless of whether they clearly expressed agreement. Participants reported that phrases such as “U up?” “Wanna come over?” “WYD?” (What you doing?), and “DTF?” (Down to fuck?) were all colloquial invitations for sex. These messages range in their degree of sexual explicitness, with “DTF” constituting a clear request for sex and “U up” being rather ambiguous.

Noting the utility of ambiguous requests, Martin explicated, “It’s obvious, but it also kind of gives you plausible deniability. It’s about as close as you can get to saying, ‘Let’s have sex’ without saying, ‘Let’s have sex’” (White, straight, cisgender man). Similarly, William explained that a direct request for a hookup would be a “ticket to them to stop responding,” further describing, “I just didn’t want to come off as too forward . . . I don’t want to come off as, like, a creep” (White, straight, cisgender man).

When participants received ambiguous text messages seeking a meetup (e.g. “Do you want to hang out?”), they attempted to gauge the match’s intentions based on contextual details such as the time of the text (e.g. afternoon or middle of the night) and place of the proposed meetup (e.g. public or private). Given that intentions were not always clear between matches, agreeing to a meetup could be interpreted as “consenting” to unanticipated sexual activity. Thus, the transition from online interactions to in-person interactions poses the legitimate risk of misalignment of expectations. This was especially the case when these messages were sent during late hours of the night. As Juliana explained:

I haven’t gotten, like, a message that has been explicitly, like, oh, like, “Let’s fuck.” Like, I feel like I’ve never really got, like, a message like that. It’s always kind of been like, “What are you doing later?” And then I have got like, a message, like the 2am “What are you doing?” But not “What are you doing,” the specific “WYD?” [other group participants laugh] That’s, like . . . that just means, like, “Let’s hook up.” Like, there’s no intentions of starting a conversation or going on a date at 2am. (White, straight, cisgender woman)

Some participants reported ignoring these messages, or not seeing them until the next morning when they were no longer relevant. However, those who responded to these messages seemed to be aware that their actions would be interpreted as providing sexual consent. Samantha highlighted the way that simply showing up after receiving a match’s request to “come over” can relay this message. As she explained, a dating app match will often:

Say, like, “Do you want to come over and hook up?” And then I would either say “yes” or “no.” And that was kind of me, like consenting to it just by saying like, “yes.” Or if I didn’t go, then “no.” (White, bisexual, cisgender woman)

When the group facilitator asked if accepting an invitation to come over was a “done deal” with “no more communication about it” Samantha responded, “there usually wouldn’t be.”

This conceptualization of colloquial consent as a finalized deal can be problematic in that it ignores the possibility that matches may revoke digitally brokered consent once they arrive at a meetup. Although colloquial texts were often sent to matches who had already met face-to face, they were just as commonly sent to matches who had not met. This is problematic, as it was not uncommon for participants in our focus groups to describe initial meetups as a screening process to gauge their comfort with, and interest in, a match (rather than to engage in sexual activity). Many participants described an initial meetup as important for determining if they “vibe” with a match. Lizzie described casually ghosting [cutting off communication with] matches who do not vibe with her. As she illustrated the typical process, “I’ll go home and I’m, like, onto the next one . . . if I’m not vibing with it, they’re gonna get ghosted, and then I move on” (White, straight, cisgender woman).

Kendis described a situation when she did not vibe well with a match and ultimately decided not to continue seeing him. After explicitly expressing disinterest in seeing this match again, Kendis explained that he continued to push her. As she relayed:

So he’d, like, constantly call me and constantly text me and I’m like, “Hey, like, I don’t think this is the route I want to go in..” . . . And he’s like, “Are you serious? Yeah, you just wasted my time.” And he’s like, really mean about it. And I was just like, “I don’t know what you want me to do, but I can’t talk to you anymore.” (African American/Native American, pansexual, cisgender woman)

The fact that Kendis met up to screen for good/bad vibes while her match felt that she had wasted his time suggests that she and her match had different expectations about the negotiated scope and terms of a meetup. Although Martin, quoted above, mentioned that seeking colloquial consent provides matches with some sense of plausible deniability, participants in our focus groups described scenarios, such as Kendis’s story, in which a match became overtly agitated when a meetup did not progress to sex.

(Re)negotiated consent

There was some noteworthy disagreement among our participants regarding whether consent with dating app matches was initially negotiated, renegotiated (to verify digitally negotiated terms), or completely absent during face-to-face meetups. Some participants were adamant that they always seek consent during meetups. That is, they either only negotiate sexual activity during face-to-face meetups or they explicitly renegotiate, or reaffirm, any consent that may have been inferred through digital brokering. Interestingly, there was a disconnect between many of the men’s and women’s thoughts on renegotiated consent, with some men stating that they always engage in this explicit process and many women stating they have never had a match engage in this process with them. For example, William emphatically stated:

Consent with me is always an explicit question. It’s never, like, you never just want to assume. So, it’s always like, “Hey, is this okay?” and it’s kind of like a step-by-step thing. Because, like, you know, you don’t just start out having sex, like, you’ll just start out kissing or whatever. And the more it escalates at each step your like, “Is this okay?” (White, straight, cisgender man)

When the facilitator asked William if his negotiations of sexual consent are ever influenced by previous digital exchanges, he responded, “I would never assume anything implicitly like that.”

At a later point during the focus group, he returned to this thought by adding:

What happens on the app, and what happens in real life are, like, two different things. Like, sexting, and, like, talking in a sexual way on the app is different from, like, getting consent in person . . . So, just because someone you know, is talking that way on the app doesn’t mean they actually want to do anything with you.

Kyle, on the contrary, mentioned that accepting an invitation to a meetup does imply sexual consent, but he clarified that he always renegotiates consent in person. As he described, “It’s implied . . . But like before anything started then I explicitly ask, just to make sure we’re on the same page” (White, straight, cisgender man).

Conversely, the women in our focus groups often mentioned that they had never been explicitly asked for sexual consent by a dating app match. Kourtney described that she’s never been asked for consent, but also noted that she has never felt violated. As she shared:

It would be nice to have, like, to be asked for verbal consent. But it’s never happened to me either. It’s always just been—they kind of just go for it. But I’ve never—I’ve never had sex with someone I didn’t want to have sex with if that makes sense. (African American, bisexual, cisgender woman)

Noting that she felt she should marry the first match who happened to ask for consent to kiss her, Samantha described the typical process with matches who “never kind of asked how I was, like, feeling or if anything changed by the time, like, I got there or, like, while I was there, or anything like that” (White, bisexual, cisgender woman).

Importantly, the women in our focus groups who noted that they never had a match explicitly negotiate consent with them also never described initiating this process themselves. In fact, noting the importance (and invisibility) of reciprocity in this process, Martin described a scenario in which a (woman) match ignored his boundaries as follows:

It was kind of overwhelming. And I felt like me as the guy was expected—to put out. And as, like, that’s kind of why I’m so over the top about making it clear that both parties are okay with what’s going on, because it’s normally a kind of guy-led dynamic. And that’s why I feel the need to . . . always check in and make sure if it’s okay, but oftentimes that isn’t extended to me, like, reciprocally. (White, straight, cisgender man)

Discussion

Heeding calls for researchers to examine the dynamics of an emerging “hybrid hookup script” and analyze the online interactions that precede face-to-face meetups (Christensen, 2021; LeFebvre, 2018), we investigated the processes by which hookups are “digitally brokered” via dating apps and other digital technologies. Focusing on online interactions, previous research has noted a missing discourse of consent in interactions between dating app matches (Thompson, 2018). According to Thompson, men’s dating app messages to women include commands for sex and threats of sexual violence that disregard women’s sexual agency and boundaries.

We found evidence of a missing discourse of consent in the vulgar messages that women in our focus groups reported receiving from the men who matched with them on dating apps. Participants reported screening through unsolicited dick pics and vulgar comments that conveyed assumptions about the types of sexual activity that were negotiable. This was especially notable among racially/ethnically minoritized women and LGBTQ+ women who matched with men, as these two groups reported receiving messages that were not only vulgar but also fetishizing. LGBTQ+ women in our sample were clear to express that they did not receive these types of vulgar messages from women matches. Thus, whereas Thompson’s (2018) theoretical construct of the missing discourse of consent points to men’s presumed entitlement to women’s bodies via the vulgar texts to dating app matches, our study adds an intersectional lens by highlighting the magnified vulgarity of messages targeted toward racially/ethnically minoritized and LGBTQ+ women.

Our work also expands upon Thompson’s (2018) missing discourse of consent in another important way. Thompson’s research on the missing discourse of consent focused exclusively on digital interactions with dating app partners. By focusing on participants’ transitions between digital interactions and face-to-face meetups, we were able to identify three types of digitally brokered consent that dating app users attempt to redeem during in-person interactions: (1) app-implied consent, (2) colloquial consent, and (3) (re)negotiated consent.

Zytko et al. (2021) previously noted that dating app users tend to utilize apps to either negotiate affirmative consent or engage in “consent signaling,” which entails inferring and/or implying consent without any overt confirmation. In our sample, the practices of participants who (re)negotiated consent closely aligned with practices of participants in Zytko et al.’s (2021) study who actively negotiated affirmative consent. However, we emphasize a key difference. In Zytko’s study, users who engaged in this process viewed other users’ profiles to look for content that expressed interest in sex, overtly consented to sexual activities before meeting up, and verbally confirmed consent when meeting face-to-face. The experiences of participants in our study suggest there is some gendered disagreement regarding whether consent is renegotiated or initially negotiated during face-to-face meetups (or negotiated at all). In general, men who matched with women tended to feel that they reaffirmed consent that had already been obtained digitally. Alternatively, women who matched with men tended to report that consent was almost never renegotiated; that is, neither they nor their matches engaged in this process of verification. Consent was either negotiated once (whether digitally or face-to-face) or not at all. This inconsistency was not apparent in participants’ discussions of interactions with same-gender matches. Thus, our findings suggest (re)negotiating consent may be hindered by traditional heteronormative scripts.

The two remaining types of consent that we identified (i.e. colloquial consent and app-implied consent) can be conceptualized as subtypes of what Zytko et al. (2021) call “consent signaling,” which they define as an implicit process in which users “infer and imply consent to sexual activity without any verbal or overt confirmation” (p. 9). Importantly, none of the subtypes of consent signaling that we identified constitutes explicit consent, and each presents its own complications. With colloquial and app-implied consent, dating app users assumed, respectively, that matches’ responses to a short, colloquial message (e.g. “U up?” or “Wanna come over?”) or their mere presence on a dating app constituted sexual consent. Participants shared stories of frustrated matches chastising them with questions such as “Why are you on Tinder?” after participants expressed sexual disinterest during a meetup. This suggests that dating app users interpret the use of this technology as an intention to engage in digitally brokered sexual activity.

Assumptions of colloquial and app-implied consent reflect presumed entitlement to sexual activity with dating app matches (usually entitlement to women’s bodies). Problems with both of these assumptions were evident in our participants’ accounts of their intentions when using dating apps. In the case of colloquial consent, some of the participants in our sample treated a meetup as a screening process to see if they “vibed” with a match. It was not until they met and interacted with matches face-to-face that they decided what types of sexual activity they did and did not intend to engage in with that match. In such cases, a match’s response to a terse invitation to a meetup should not be interpreted to imply sexual consent. Pertinent to app-implied consent, the participants in our sample reported a range of reasons for downloading dating apps, with many reasons being non-sexual (e.g. seeking validation, alleviating boredom). Thus, assuming one’s presence on a dating app implies consent is problematic.

Limitations

Findings from our study must be understood within the confines of a few important limitations. First, participants in our sample were largely White women who attended a PWI in the southeastern United States, and all interviews were conducted by women. One particular voice that was largely absent from our analysis was that of gay men. We only had one gay man participate in our study. Second, this study explored the use of dating apps to digitally broker sexual consent in the college hookup sexual market. There are likely to be important differences in the way that sexual consent is digitally brokered in other sexual markets. For example, the negotiation of sexual consent among dating app users who are not college students and live in a large urban setting could be more diverse and demonstrate less commonality than the experiences of our sample, which consisted of students on a single campus. Future research should seek to explore the way consent is negotiated among dating app matches from a larger, more diverse, and anonymous sexual market.

Third, social desirability could have influenced responses such that participants did not want to minimize the importance of sexual consent in front of focus group facilitators and/or members. Thus, anonymous diary data may be a beneficial method of data collection in future research. Fourth, it is notable that men’s and women’s descriptions of interactions with dating app matches did not always align. For example, men who matched with women described clearly negotiating and validating consent whereas women who matched with men stated that their matches never explicitly asked for consent. This could be a difference in interpretation—or it could mean that the women in our sample are matching with men who are very different from the men in our sample. Unfortunately, our methods do not permit us to make this determination. Future research could address this by interviewing matched pairs and gleaning insight into their interpretations of their shared interactions.

Finally, by asking participants to reflect on their personal histories with dating app matches, data from our study are retrospective in nature and, thus, subject to recall bias. Future studies should examine the processes of digital brokering of sexual activity and consent among more diverse samples and in real time, such as through (1) prospective diary studies in which participants actively reflect on interactions with matches or (2) textual analyses of messages shared between matches via dating apps, social media platforms, or texting.

Conclusion

Despite these limitations, we believe our study makes important contributions to both theory and practice. Our study extends theoretical work on the use of dating apps and other digital technologies to broker romantic relationships in what Ellingson et al. (2004) call sexual markets (Rosenfeld et al., 2019; Rosenfeld and Thomas, 2012). However, whereas this past research has examined the digital brokering of matches, our findings indicate that dating app users believe this technology may be used to broker sexual activity (and consent). Just as Rosenfeld and colleagues point to the ways dating apps remove the role of social networks in brokering connections, our findings point to the ways that dating apps undermining the agency of dating app users in brokering sexual activity (especially for those for whom consent is inferred because they are using a dating app or respond to a match’s ambiguous request to meet up). Future research should explore the ways that technology may threaten individual agency in sexual interactions.

Pertinent to practice, participants in our sample were very familiar with the use of digital technologies to negotiate sexual consent. Although some participants indicated that they never assume digitally brokered consent will transfer to face-to-face meetups, the stories of many participants suggest this is not the norm. That is, participants shared stories in which men assumed women were consenting to sexual activity either through previous digital correspondences, their acceptance for an invitation to a meetup, or their mere presence on a dating app.

Thus, it is important that sexual assault prevention efforts reflect the fact that some college students may attempt to digitally negotiate sexual activity and subsequently redeem the terms of digitally brokered consent during face-to-face encounters with matches/partners. A recent systematic review of the literature on campus sexual assault prevention indicated that sexual consent is one of the most common content areas addressed (Kettrey et al., 2023). Yet, prevention programming largely neglects dating app experiences (see Wong et al., 2020 for an exception). Moving forward, programming should address the intersection of dating apps and sexual consent.

Programming content should emphasize that any digitally negotiated consent should be viewed as a simple pre-negotiation that must be renegotiated and verified during face-to-face interactions, and that even re-negotiated consent may be withdrawn. Thus, college students should be reminded to verify consent when transitioning from digital to face-to-face interactions, as well as throughout face-to-face interactions. Since app-implied consent appears to be somewhat normative, the most advisable approach is to acknowledge this in a way that does not shame college students for adhering to this norm, but encourages them to challenge it. This is exemplified by one of the previously quoted men in out sample expressed, “What happens on the app, and what happens in real life are, like, two different things.” The adoption of this sentiment is an important priority for campus initiatives that aim to foster healthy digital and face-to-face interactions among students.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Heather Hensman Kettrey

Author biographies

Heather Hensman Kettrey is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Clemson University. Her research interests include power, violence, and inequality specifically as they pertain to gender and sexuality.

Summer Quinn is a graduate student in the Masters of Social Science program at Clemson University. Her research interests include criminal and juvenile justice; class conflict and inequality; and power dynamics related to sex, gender, and relationships.

Monika Nwajei is a recent graduate of the Masters of Social Science program at Clemson University. Her research interests include criminal justice policy, juvenile justice, criminal justice and behavior, police brutality, restorative justice, and punishment.

Madison Leslie recently completed a bachelor’s degree in Psychology at Clemson University.

Elizabeth Paradise recently completed a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology at Clemson University.

Devyn Wishon recently graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science in Criminal Justice at Clemson University. Her research interests include criminal justice policies, community policing, police brutality, and criminal behavior.

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