What are your reasons for using online dating? Are you in it to distract yourself from negative emotions, have fun or find a serious partner? The point of this clarification is not to judge yourself, but to be honest with yourself.

It’s important to remember that online dating is designed to be addictive — the longer matchmaking sites can keep you clicking, the greater their opportunity to make money off you through advertising or signing you up for special subscriptions or added features. The sites’ ease of use, endless stream of profiles and intermittent reward in the form of a mutual match or a message may lead you to swipe frequently or spend hours browsing through profiles. But more choices are not always better.

People are often overwhelmed by too many options, even though they may not realize it. An average Tinder user swipes on 140 profiles a day, according to a 2016 research note by Cowen and Co. A 2019 study by Dutch researchers Tila Pronk and Jaap Denissen from Tilburg University found that online daters became more likely to reject the profiles the longer they swiped — a phenomenon they called “rejection mind-set.” “When people notice that they are rejecting more and more profiles, their dissatisfaction with the dating pool increases and they become very pessimistic about their chances of finding a partner online,” Pronk said.