You wouldn’t know it now, from my thousand-yard stare, but there was once a time – not even that long ago – when dating apps were pretty exciting, and even fun. In 2012, I was 21 and living in a small city; Tinder was a welcome breath of fresh air into that claustrophobic scene, offering a way into social circles adjacent to our own.

With time, the pitfalls and risks of the technology became apparent. But, in the beginning, there was optimism that dating apps not only worked as they claimed to, but could make our lives better

Twelve years later, that spark of possibility seems to be well and truly extinguished. Dating-app users are deleting their profiles in droves, sending companies spiralling. Together, Bumble and Match Group – the industry leaders – have lost more than $40bn in market value since 2021.

The reason most often given for dating apps’ decline is that their commercial imperatives have taken priority over their functionality – from pricey subscriptions, to strategies for sequestering the most desirable members.

As people have wised up to the tactics to keep them swiping, they’ve lost faith in the possibility of the apps leading to a positive connection. Some of the theories I’ve heard are vaguely conspiracist, suggesting that Hinge or Bumble is maliciously keeping you from the love of your life until you sign up for premium.

It’s true that dating apps exist to make money, and we know very little about their algorithms. But it strikes me as oversimplistic to blame the technology for our lacklustre or negative experiences when we, the users, also play a part.

After more than a decade, dating apps are no longer just platforms where we go to meet people. They are worlds that we’ve learned to navigate, internalising their mission and metrics as our own, even when they work against their stated goal of finding love.

Certainly, when I take an honest look at my own behaviour, I’ve contributed to the cutthroat culture I often decry. I’ve ghosted men, as well as been ghosted by them; I can neglect to message new matches, or reply to them, because I’ve become so accustomed to the chat fizzling out.

Anecdotally, it’s now common for people to use the apps with no intention of meeting their matches in person, either fishing for validation or equating the process of swiping with actually dating.

It shows how we’ve allowed our approach to dating, and even our behaviour with dates, to be dictated by the technology.

Counterintuitively, however, I see that as reason for optimism: if our current fatalism around dating stems from the apps, then perhaps we’re one technological innovation away from doing things differently.

While we often talk about technology as an impediment to “real” relationships, it’s more than capable of creating them. After all, one in 10 US-coupled adults met their partner online. I myself have turned many social-media connections into real friends; other people spend hours immersed in role-playing games with strangers, or contributing to online groups and forums.

We have ways of expressing ourselves digitally that are far more natural, nuanced and authentic than the selection of prompts and photos still centred by dating apps. Some people are already making their own romantic luck online by making and sharing their own “dating docs”, searching for romantic connections on platforms such as Duolingo and LinkedIn, and even creating their own dating apps.

But so far the lack of innovation from the companies themselves has been staggering. If I was head of user experience at Bumble or Hinge, I’d start by taking the focus off users’ “dating intentions” and the search for a partner; it’s too much pressure, and too big a gap for an app to ethically attempt to fill.

Instead, we need to find new ways of using technology to create connections – ones that support us to actually be ourselves online, and to get to know each other without all the pressure of finding love. Currently dating apps are all tell, no show, meaning it’s easy for people to misrepresent themselves but hard to tell what someone’s really like.

The next generation of dating apps needs to support its users to relate to each other, not to just judge each other’s pictures and prompts. Thinking about how we used to date – by becoming more familiar over time, or eyeballing each other from afar – that might be achieved by apps’ prioritising authentic (if digital) interactions over the pursuit of love.

You can learn a lot about someone indirectly – by browsing their bookshelves, for example, or playing a game with them. The next wave of dating apps recognises this. InPress, currently localised to residents of Washington DC, connect users on the basis of their news feeds and articles they like to read online. Date Like Goblins, meanwhile, will get singles together to play video games while voice-chatting.

I believe that the internet can still be used to host that party, and that it’s possible to build dating apps back better. But it will take a bold, creative vision to shake us from our swiping-induced stupor, and renew our enthusiasm. After all, we’ve spent 12 years learning to squeeze ourselves into little boxes – and “forgotten how to actually meet people in the process”, as Magdalene J Taylor wrote in the New York Times.

That’s why I’m sceptical that those ditching dating apps to take their chances in the “real world” will fare any better there: the rot started by dating apps has spread. But a new model could renew our interest and change our approach. Think of the brief flurry of excitement stirred by the social-sharing app BeReal, or Pokémon Go: an online game that brought people physically together. Could there be an app that connected you with your friends’ friends? Or one that matched you on the basis of your Spotify libraries?

It’s too late now to go back to how we used to be. For better or (as most would say) for worse, we’ve successfully “gamified” dating: we’ve changed, and dating’s changed. The challenge, now, is to make the game fun.

• Elle Hunt is a freelance journalist