Dating apps find users want friends, not sex, in post-COVID world

Apps like Tinder and Bumble are launching or acquiring new services focused entirely on making and maintaining friends.

I’ve just come out of a long-term lockdown. Can we be friends? Amorous entanglements are not what is uppermost in the minds of many people emerging from long periods of pandemic isolation. Instead, they crave the friendships and social groups they have been starved of over the past year. That is the verdict of dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble, which are launching or acquiring new services focused entirely on making and maintaining friends.