How dating apps are increasingly used to start platonic friendships, with average time spent on Bumble's BFF growing 83% for men and 44% for women in Q1 2021
Millennials and members of Generation Z increased their use of dating apps to make platonic friends during the pandemic; ‘now we all have these big life moments together’ Tweets: @sebaldus_ , @bad_takes , @chickenparmpapi , @beingbla , @zandywithaz , @slhzdh , @carnage4life , @velvetrevulva88 , @saraheneedleman , @ericjackson , and @taralach Tweets: Sebaldus / @sebaldus_ : Most wives are not going to be okay with their husbands have Match dot com or Bumble on their freaking phone lol https://twitter.com/... Brendan Karet / @bad_takes : showing up to a blind friend date and asking the stranger “how many recent seagal films have you seen” and “what's your favorite budget tarkov loadout” https://twitter.com/... Mikey Pomodoro👌 / @chickenparmpapi : No matter how single I am. I will never be “sign up for Facebook dating” single https://twitter.com/... @beingbla : Gave Facebook dating a go (yes I am depressed and self destructive thenkyou) and this may shock you but it's just loads of men asking you to meet for drinks right away at 1am on a Friday. Haunted Dog / @zandywithaz : Maybe the dumbest thing I've ever seen https://twitter.com/... Kian Salehizadeh / @slhzdh : If I'm looking for a friend without benefits but with plenty of synergies, I turn to LinkedIn. https://twitter.com/... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : It's a known fact that it's harder to make friends over 30 especially if you're married and/or have kids. Given all the stats about increased loneliness, there's definitely an opportunity for platonic friend apps especially for same gender/social class. https://www.wsj.com/... @velvetrevulva88 : So I changed my Facebook relationship status to “In A Relationship” so Facebook would stop spamming me with “Try Facebook Dating!” ads and now my friends keep asking me who the mystery guy is. CAN'T A GIRL JUST ENJOY BEING SINGLE ALREADY?!?! Sarah E. Needleman / @saraheneedleman : Loved this a-hed!: Twentysomethings look to Tinder, Bumble and Match for friendship, not romance. https://www.wsj.com/... Eric Jackson / @ericjackson : I love the smell of increased TAM in the morning... https://twitter.com/... Tara Lachapelle / @taralach : Twentysomethings look to Tinder, Bumble and Match for friendship, not romance. [And IMO these apps do a lot better job of it than apps like Peanut that are meant for platonic friendships] https://www.wsj.com/... via @WSJ
Context & Ripple Effects
The friend-finding pivot long predates the pandemic: Facebook built Secret Crush matching into its 2019 Dating launch, and 'personal CRM' startups were already treating relationships as software-managed assets that same year. What the Q1 2021 numbers add is scale — time spent on BFF jumped 83% for men and 44% for women as lockdowns pushed millennials and Gen Z to repurpose dating infrastructure for platonic use.
The tweets captured in the piece also flag the friction: as one put it, spouses may not be comfortable seeing Match or Bumble on a partner's phone, which is exactly the brand problem a friendship product has to solve.
First-order effects
- Young users are spending materially more session time in Bumble's non-dating mode, shifting the company's engagement profile toward friendship even while its revenue model remains dating-centric.
- The stigma problem surfaced directly in user reaction — a dating-app icon on a phone reads as romantic by default, so platonic usage inherits suspicion the product design didn't intend.
Second-order effects
- Rivals followed the engagement: by 2024 Bumble, Muzz, and Match Group were pushing friend-finding and community products explicitly to reach users with dating-app fatigue.
- Friend-finding became a defensive line as core dating monetization eroded — Match Group reported seven straight quarters of declining paying users, making free platonic engagement both a retention tool and a monetization puzzle.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the category's boundary dissolves: the same swiping-and-matching stack competes for general social connection against Discord and Reddit, where young adults were already seeking friends post-pandemic despite lingering stigma.
- Structurally, 'dating company' becomes a misnomer — these firms are converging on connection platforms whose hardest problems are trust (who is here for romance vs. friendship) and converting non-paying social users into revenue, an unsolved tension the 2021 data foreshadowed.
The trend: Dating platforms are steadily expanding into general social-connection services as pandemic-era friendship usage grows and core dating subscriptions stall.