Remember when we used to meet new partners at cocktail parties, bars, libraries, or record shops? No? Me neither. Like many Gen Zers, I started dating in the age of smartphones and in today’s digitalised dating market, love kicks off with a dual swipe to the right.

Dating apps have brought us a world of boundless options, fresh experimental experiences, and perfectly curated pairings—the kind of freedom and opportunity that past generations could only dream about. Or at least, that’s what they keep telling us.

However, marginalised groups have increasingly expressed their dissatisfaction with online courtship, mainly due to its inability to properly address, or even acknowledge, the many bad experiences that work as a deterrent. On the soft side of the criticism, netizens bemoan that the experience feels impersonal, superficial, and manufactured. On the harder side of that, you can find allegations of racism, hate speech, catfishing, stalking, emotional abuse, or physical assault.

Bumble need to fuck off and stop trying to shame women into coming back to the apps.

Instead of them to run ads targeted at men telling them to be normal. pic.twitter.com/y6XVFXanaB

— Tinkerbell 🧚🏾‍♀️✨️ (@BlobWithAGob) May 13, 2024

Despite the fact that both Hinge and Tinder have terms of agreements that ask users to confirm that they have not been convicted of, or pleaded no contest to a felony including sex crimes, an investigation published in January 2023 by The Telegraph revealed that there had been a sharp rise in the number of police cases linked to dating apps. There was an explosive 175 per cent increase, from 699 in 2017 to 1,922 in 2021. The publication further uncovered that between 2017 and 2023 there had been 8,366 reported predatory offences which involved apps such as Tinder and Bumble.

This raises questions regarding what apps are doing to guarantee safety as young people embark on one of the most vulnerable and intimidating journeys there is: modern dating.

For this reason, SCREENSHOT reached out to Heather Hopkins, the founder and chief executive of Hulah, a novel new dating app where men have to be endorsed by women (and vice versa) or subject themselves to a thorough background check in order to join.

“This is hard for me to talk about, but I think sharing the story behind Hulah is important,” Hopkins responded when I asked her why she created the app.

“In college, I went through something traumatic—I was repeatedly raped in my sleep by someone I trusted. Coming from a religious background, I didn’t fully understand how bad it was and thought this was just part of what women had to endure. It took him becoming physically violent for me to realise it was a dangerous situation. He was the first person I was ever with, and the experience left me a shell of myself, spending years in therapy. When I was finally ready to date again, I downloaded a dating app and saw that he was on there. My heart broke, thinking of other women who might experience the same,” the CEO reflected.

@itsheatherhopkins

My Genovia. 💜 Your support with Hulah and helping power our community helping other women meet better guys means the world to me. With every engagement and couple who have met through Hulah it feels like the highest form of healing for me-- knowing so many women will only experience healthy, safe love. We are sweepint the nation rn and this is just the start #datingapp #mystory #foundingstory #hulah #betterguys #femalefounder #dating #iydknyk

♬ original sound - Luke | thisisme.inanutshell

@itsheatherhopkins

THIS IS THE DATING DREAM DONT WAKE ME UP 😭😭😭😭😭🙌🙌🙌 HULAH HULAH HULAH IS THE APP #dating #losangeles

♬ original sound - Heather Hopkins, Hulah CEO

The staggering number of crimes like stalking and assault being linked to dating apps is really nothing new. A 2019 ProPublica report found more than a third of the over 1,200 women surveyed by the Columbia Journalism Institute reported being sexually assaulted by someone they met through an online dating platform. Over half of those women even said they were raped.

Another survey by the Australian Institute of Criminology found that three in four survey respondents had been subjected to sexual violence facilitated through dating apps in the last five years. The study found evidence that assaults facilitated via a dating app also tended to be much more violent, among other things.

Hopkins continued: “This inspired me to create a safer space with Hulah, where dating profiles are curated and come with social proof. With Hulah, you can see if others know the person you’re considering meeting and reach out to them for background or feedback. It’s not just swiping with no accountability. I want to help protect others from what I went through, knowing that a third of rapes and assaults are connected to dating apps. If I can save even one person from this pain, then it’s all worth it. That’s what we’re doing with Hulah.”

However, experts also questioned whether background checks would be the best way forward, considering that sexual assaults are severely unreported, meaning that they can’t provide a full sense of security.

“Listen, I always say, ‘It’s better to be safe than sorry’,” Hopkins noted when I questioned her on this. “My mission is to build the safest dating app for women with high-quality men, so I’m not cutting corners on safety. Although we’re a smaller business, I’ve found ways to ensure the highest safety standards within our budget, but we can’t guarantee 100 per cent safety. We encourage users to take precautions—share your location, message a friend before a date, and stay alert. It’s still important to protect yourself.”

@itsheatherhopkins

It's 2024, get endorsed #dating #datingapp #hulah #betterguys #womenssafety

♬ original sound - Heather Hopkins, Hulah CEO

Hulah’s approach to online safety is effectively weeding out catfishers, married people, and perpetrators with a record.

Yet, this has also been leading to one or two negative reviews on the app store. However, when I asked Hopkins about this, the CEO noted that these were overwhelmingly by men.

“It’s funny because women never complain about it; only some men do, usually the ones who can’t get an endorsement. And honestly, that’s perfect—that’s who we’re aiming to filter out. The system works.”

Towards the end of the interview, we reflected on the Herculean task of finding a partner in today’s dating environment that is dominated by hookup culture (no judgment here), superficiality, the threat of violence, and the occasional weirdo that even Hulah can’t weed out. It’s easy to lose hope.

“At the end of the day, a dating app’s purpose is to help people turn online connections into real-life ones. I always tell people not to rely only on dating apps—get out there in real life, make moves. But apps can help you meet more compatible people,” Hopkins encouraged.

“Just choose apps that are safer and better, because we’re actively working to filter out a lot of the bad experiences and I get success stories all the time, from girls who almost didn’t swipe right because the guy had one awkward photo. Guys often don’t have good profile photos,” Hopkins noted laughing. 

“They’re not like us, taking tons of pictures of each other. They have almost no photos to choose from. So, if he looks even remotely interesting, swipe right; he might end up being your husband!”

Women’s safety is as much of an issue online as it is offline, with the added challenge that the online landscape is largely devoid of any real policies and legislation that would make it more difficult for predators to find victims. However, women are increasingly building tools to improve their safety and the ones of others, giving us a bit more hope that online courtship can be a qualitative experience.