Should age filters on dating apps be banned?

In the world of online dating, being ageist is exceedingly easy.  

All you need to do is add in a filter, and poof! People of certain ages won’t be shown as potential matches. Like magic, any prejudice can be passed off as a personal preference.

And it’s women aged over 50 who are too often counted out.  

“The men I contact don’t respond AT ALL,” wrote one 65-year old user on the discussion app Reddit. “I’ve noticed that more than a few men use a lower age…for ‘search purposes’,” wrote another, referring to those who lie about how old they are so they’ll show up in searches for younger people.  

While no app can stop ageism entirely, there’s surely a duty of care here to make older users feel welcome. So what if we removed the option to filter by age?  

I’m not suggesting that age be kept a secret. Rather, it wouldn’t be used to exclude people before they can even get started.  

In this (perhaps idealised) vision of online dating, more important things like people’s interests could be front-and-centre instead. At the very least, this would create more chances for connection—and prevent people from being reduced to a set of metrics.  

Dating filters don’t work as well as you’d think, anyway—even when they’re used with good intentions. Some folks pick filters based on traits they find desirable, because they think this increases their odds of finding someone they’ll click with.  

But this actually doesn’t have any bearing on how good a match you are for each other.  

In 2012, the Association for Psychological Science found that dating apps which match people based on their preferences aren’t any more likely than any other method to result in a successful romance.  

This is because the important stuff that makes relationships work—communication, trust, being able to get along—can’t be predicted from a set of facts you have about someone you don’t actually know.  

And the more requirements you have, the narrower your dating pool becomes.  

Taking into account the average person’s romantic criteria, researchers from the University of Bath and dating website eHarmony calculated that single folks have a one in 562 chance of finding someone who’s their type on paper.  

Out of around 23 million singles in the UK, that works out to being about 41,000 people who’d fit the bill.  

The research also found that when you narrow your age requirements to someone six years older or younger than you, you remove four-fifths of your options.  

These are estimates that should be taken with a pinch of salt. But they do suggest that if we were more open to meeting people we don’t expect we’ll like, we’d increase our chances of finding love.  

Dating apps can be a great way to meet new people but it’s important we recognise their limitations. We should remember that these are people we’re swiping left or right on, not a list of products on Amazon.  

And if you do want to use filters, I’d suggest reflecting on why that criteria is important to you. For example, people in marginalised groups might seek connection with others like them, who share their experiences. Others might want to find a match with the same sexual orientation. In cases like these, filters can genuinely be helpful.  

Online dating platforms have a responsibility to protect their users from discrimination and they must do so by design. And while taking away the option to filter in ways that exercise prejudice won’t magically fix inequality, it’s a step in the right direction.

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