Sarah Hyland and Wells Adams on Facebook Dating and Falling in Love

Talking to the newly engaged couple about how to maneuver the internet in the single age.

At an event to celebrate the launch of the new Facebook Dating app, actress Sarah Hyland and her fiance Wells Adams, from Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise, were happy to talk about how to find love online. The newly engaged couple did not meet on a dating app, but first hooked up on Instagram and Twitter, making them the unconventional millennial model for using the internet to find love. Although almost 40% of heterosexual couples meet online today, the concept is still a bit taboo; In my experience, while everyone I know is open about the fact that they use dating apps on a regular basis, it still seems like there's currency in how you met your partner. other. (A cute story of in-person encounters seems more valuable than an online match.) When I talk to friends who tell me they met their partners through apps, there is almost always a pang of irony. It's as if finding The One online is incessantly paired with a self-deprecating laugh of Can you believe it?

Listen, Adams tells me as he talks about the current state of dating at the launch event. Everyone who goes to Bachelor, Bachelorette, Bachelor in Paradise, for all intents and purposes, has been dating the wrong people their entire lives.
Were you one of those people? I ask.
Yes, says Adams. I think everyone has this perceived 'type', but it hasn't worked for them and they continue to fail. These shows, especially the one I'm on, show that if you open your heart to other people who wouldn't be your 'type', you can have beautiful, long-lasting relationships. Adams then references Evan Bass and Carly Waddell, who met at the third season of Bachelor in Paradise and now they are married and pregnant with their second child. Carly said, 'I would never date this guy,' and now she's pregnant again. I think it shows that you can find love anywhere.
I think what it says about society is that people want more options, Hyland chimes in. We don't want to be told what to do, we want to be able to make our own decisions for ourselves and have the option to do it.
Facebook Dating is just another one of those options. After two years of product design and planning, the app was officially launched yesterday, existing within the Facebook mobile app rather than as a separate app, although the registration process requires users to sign up and create a profile of separate appointments. At the time, it works similar to other dating apps: users answer questions about themselves, upload photos, and can link directly to their Instagram account. The algorithm suggests people based on a user's pre-set preferences along with the interests and events they have attended or plan to attend, as indicated on Facebook. No matches - just like or comment on someone's profile to let them know you're interested. And don't worry: the algorithm prevents any of your Facebook friends from appearing on your dating feed.
What Facebook Dating essentially means is that there is a singles room within each Facebook group, Nathan Sharp, the product manager behind Facebook Dating, told the crowd at yesterday's launch event. It also means that if you go to the Governor’s Ball in 2020, you can start connecting with people even before you go to that event. Events are particularly interesting in the dating context because past events represent missed connections and future events represent predefined dates. 

While Facebook Dating contains many of the best features of other dating apps, it does have a few distinct qualities: The Secret Crush feature allows users to select up to nine Facebook or Instagram profiles that they follow. If the person you like includes you on their list too, it's a coincidence. And if it doesn't match, it's like nothing happened - no one will ever know you entered your name and everyone is safe. While dating apps largely aim to connect us with strangers, Secret Crush makes being vulnerable with people you already know easier.

Then, by the end of the year, Facebook will implement the ability to share Instagram and Facebook Stories in Dating, allowing dating profiles to live and breathe less like a dating app and more like any other social media profile. Its aim is to make the dating app profile less static and curated, although in reality what it is doing is combining the purposes of both media: Facebook Dating allows you to slip into someone's DMs, but with the peace of mind that It's exactly what they would want you to do. 

The integration of Facebook and Instagram in dating apps is not that new. Hinge originally launched in 2013 on the premise that you would only be introduced to people you have mutual friends with on Facebook, though it has since moved away from that model. Tinder and Bumble originally required users to connect their Facebook accounts as a means of verification, and other apps also allow users to embed Instagram accounts on their profiles. In many ways, it's surprising that Facebook hasn't officially entered the online dating market before, as it laid the foundation for the ways millennials communicate online - how we flirt, how we express interest, how we show approval. In that sense, the launch of Facebook Dating may make a previously unspoken truth less taboo: We are finally admitting that one of the primary uses of social media is to look at the people we are drawn to.

Through dating apps, we theoretically have the opportunity to try things outside of our traditional watering holes, both physical and metaphorical, if we want to take advantage of it. But at the same time, apps make it easier than ever to filter by their 'type', if not officially (via companies like The League and Raya, which accept members based on their career and educational level), then by location. Key facts from personal history prominently at the top of someone's profile. You can quickly judge someone, swipe left, and move on.

The hope, it seems, is that Facebook Dating mitigates that. "That's what I think is great about the Facebook app, says Hyland. it could be someone you would never think to look twice at, but is interested in all the same things as you, and you are forced to look a second time at a person in a way that you wouldn't have. prior to.

I imagine dating is and always has been an area where people feel they have the least control. To be healthy and rewarding, it must be reciprocal. Love is inherently a two-way street and not a one-man job. But will something like Facebook Dating, which aims to bring real life (or a curated version of your real life ready for social media, at least) on your dating app profile, make finding a human connection online? be more or less human? Only time will tell.