How dating apps have destroyed real social connections

In our previous article, we talked about the paradox of large numbers: how crossing paths with thousands of people paradoxically prevents us from truly meeting anyone.

Digital took this problem and multiplied it by a thousand. Literally.

But it did something far worse. It added a layer that our brains are completely incapable of handling: generalized fakeness.

From village to the entire world: the explosion the brain can't follow

Let's revisit the scale.

Your great-grandparents: a village, a few hundred people. Your grandparents: a neighborhood, maybe a thousand. Your parents: a city, a few tens of thousands. You, with a smartphone: the entire world. Billions.

In one generation, we went from a local, limited dating pool to an infinite ocean of virtual possibilities.

The problem? Our brains haven't evolved one bit.

They're still wired to handle about 150 significant relationships—what's called Dunbar's number. Beyond that, they saturate. They simplify. They over-categorize. They protect themselves.

Faced with thousands of profiles on an app, the brain does what it can: it swipes. Fast. Without really processing. Without really feeling.

The new toxic dimension: fake as the norm

But the real poison of digital isn't just the numbers. It's generalized deception.

In the physical world, fake exists. You can lie about your age, exaggerate your achievements, hide your flaws. But it remains limited. Hard to claim you're 6'1" when you're 5'7". Impossible to hide your energy, your presence, your way of being.

Online, everything becomes falsifiable.

Photos are retouched, filtered, selected from hundreds of shots. Profiles are optimized like resumes. Descriptions are personal marketing. Conversations are thought out, reread, calculated.

It's no longer self-presentation. It's performance.

The attention economy: stand out or disappear

Why does everyone cheat? Because the system demands it.

On a dating app, you're competing with thousands of other profiles. To exist, you need to stand out. To stand out, you need to escalate.

A normal photo? Invisible. An honest bio? Boring. An authentic profile? Drowned in the mass.

So we optimize. We embellish. We lie a little. Then a little more. Until the profile no longer resembles the person at all.

It's the attention economy applied to human relationships. And it's devastating.

A brain not equipped to detect fake at this scale

Your brain has one main function: to protect you. To do this, it filters, evaluates, detects threats and opportunities.

For millennia, it trained itself to read faces, interpret body language, sense intentions. It became excellent at detecting lies... in person.

But facing a screen?

It has no reliable data. No gaze to analyze. No micro-expressions to decode. No tone of voice to interpret. No energy to feel.

All it has left are photos (potentially fake), words (potentially calculated), and promises (potentially empty).

Result: it's blind. And it knows it.

So it does the only thing it can do: it distrusts everything.

The consequences: distrust, cynicism, exhaustion

This permanent distrust has profound effects.

We no longer trust anyone. Every profile is suspect. Every photo is probably retouched. Every message might hide manipulative intent. We approach every interaction in defensive mode.

We become actors in the fake ourselves. To survive in this system, we end up playing the game. We retouch our photos. We embellish our lives. We calculate our responses. We become what we hate.

We exhaust ourselves. Constantly filtering truth from lies consumes enormous mental energy. Swiping, analyzing, doubting, hoping, being disappointed... This cycle repeated hundreds of times ends up draining us.

We close off. After enough disappointments, something breaks. We stop believing it's possible. We still swipe, out of habit, but we don't really believe anymore.

The real world: imperfect but impossible to fake

Now, imagine the same encounter in the real world.

You're in a café. Someone catches your attention. Not a photo. A real person, right there, right now.

You see how they move. How they talk. How they laugh. You pick up their energy. You feel something—or you don't.

No filter. No retouching. No time to calculate a perfect response.

It's raw. It's imperfect. It's real.

And that's exactly what your brain needs to function properly. Real data. Real signals. A real basis for decision-making.

The body doesn't lie. Presence can't be faked. Energy can't be retouched.

The vicious cycle of fake

Let's summarize the trap:

Digital exposes you to an infinite number of profiles
Competition pushes you to embellish, then to lie
Generalized lying makes everything suspect
Distrust prevents any real connection
Repeated failure reinforces cynicism
Cynicism pushes you to lie even more to "protect yourself"

It's a self-feeding system. One that destroys what it claims to create: human connections.

eynect: opting out of the game

At eynect, we decided not to play this game.

No profile to optimize. No photo to retouch. No bio to market. No competition for attention.

Just a simple observation: you crossed paths with someone in real life. That person struck you. You want to see them again.

That's it.

No need to sell yourself. No need to perform. No need to be suspicious.

Because you've already seen the real person. You've already felt something authentic. Your brain has already done its job—with real data.

eynect doesn't create the connection. It captures the one that already exists.

Less fake. More real.

Because the problem isn't that we don't meet anyone anymore. It's that we only meet characters.