Smart Phones Killed Dating


Originally posted on Amour and Apparel

If video killed the radio star then the smartphone killed courting. I love my iPhone. I can’t get through a day without it, but iPhones, Blackberries and Androids have ruined the art of dating and it’s not even the calling feature that did it! These darn apps, and social media as a whole, straight up murdered dating. They wrote its obituary in emojis and played a polyphonic ringtone at its funeral.


Remember when cellphones first came out? No longer did your little boyfriend have to make sure to call you before your parents got home from work and you didn’t have to sneak into their room to “steal” the phone to call him back after they fell asleep. You’d sleep with your cellphone on your pillow because you knew whatever he’d say would be sweeter than any dream you could have.

Then, texting started.




It baffles me that you can “talk” to a guy for months and never know what he sounds like. Having three hour text-ual conversations when you are both at home doing nothing is outrageous. If we text back and forth for an hour and I dial you and you don’t pick up you better not text me back instead. I’m going to assume that you have no bass in your voice and pillow talk is not sexy in the key of Alvin the chipmunk.

So texting led to people no longer using the telephone part of their smart phones and apps and social networking have made it normal to speed past really getting to know someone. Three days after I met a guy and two days after he first texted me, he asked me to send him a picture. What happened to, “Hey girl. How ya doing? I was wondering if I could take you out. Show you a good time?” a la Charlie Wilson? Now guys want you to send T&A pics before they even learn your last name. Men aren’t the only ones guilty. One of my friends asks men to send her pictures of their penises over Twitter.

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When I told Mr. Ayo Technology that I don’t send pictures to men I barely know, he disappeared. Oh. Freaking. Well. Before cellphones and digital cameras, you had to wait forever to get a picture. A girl would have to use an entire roll of film, take it to the store and have it developed before she could distribute it. Even if she had a Polaroid camera, the man would have to wait for her to shake it up a few times before he could see it.

Just when I thought Mr. Ayo Technology was gone for good, he resurfaced (via text of course) and you would not believe his next question. “Are you on Instagram?” Once again, he was disappointed by my answer. Two days later, before he asked what my interests are or if I have siblings, he wrote, “Are you on Facebook?”

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I was D-O-N-E done! I told him I was not on social media even though I’m all over it. Why would you want pictures of random women, and that’s what I was to him at that point, in your phone? He claimed that he wanted a picture because I am “so beautiful” that he “was like Dammm” [sic] when he met me. I didn’t know him well enough to know that my face wouldn’t end up on some kinky website or something so I told him I deactivated my Facebook account.

After two weeks of sporadic texting in which we learned next to nothing about each other, and only because he realized he wouldn’t get a picture, Mr. Ayo Technology suggested we “meet up.” Shouldn’t that have come first? Then, if things went well, we could’ve squeezed our heads together and posed for a pic using the reverse camera feature on one of our iPhones. But no, it didn’t happen that way because this “instant message/send me a pic before I know anything about you” culture created by smart phones and social networking has caused dating to be dead on arrival.

-Melissa Danielle

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