The Hidden Problems With 'Hookup Culture' Apps — And What UK Users Want Instead

We need to talk about what's actually happening on hookup-focused dating apps in the UK. Not the sanitised marketing version, not the aspirational "sex-positive liberation" narrative, but the reality that thousands of UK users are experiencing and increasingly rejecting.

To be clear: there's nothing inherently wrong with casual sex or hookup culture. Consenting adults can do what they like. But the apps that have grown around hookup culture have created a specific ecosystem with specific problems, and those problems are getting worse, not better. Here's what we're actually seeing.

Problem 1: The Dehumanisation Is Real

Let's start with the most fundamental issue: hookup apps have normalised treating people as commodities. Not metaphorically — literally. The design, the language, the entire user experience reduces humans to a catalogue of available bodies.

The Shopping Experience

Browse through photos, filter by physical attributes, add to favourites, message multiple "options" simultaneously. The entire interaction model is borrowed from e-commerce, and it shows. We've heard from countless UK users who feel like they're shopping on Amazon rather than meeting potential partners.

The problem compounds because everyone on these apps is simultaneously shopping and being shopped for. You're both consumer and product. This creates a psychological dynamic that's fundamentally different from meeting people organically, and not in a good way.

The Disposability Culture

When people are effectively products, they're treated as disposable. Someone's not quite what you expected? No chemistry after meeting up? Ghost them and move on to the next option. The apps make this easy, and hookup culture has normalised it as acceptable behaviour.

We've noticed this particularly in UK cities with large dating pools. In London especially, the abundance of options creates a mindset where no individual connection matters because there's always someone else. This disposability affects everyone negatively — both the people being discarded and the people doing the discarding.

The Impact on Mental Health

Being repeatedly treated as disposable does psychological damage. We've heard from numerous UK users who've experienced anxiety, depression, and significantly lowered self-esteem after extended use of hookup apps.

Women particularly report feeling objectified and reduced to their physical appearance. Men particularly report feeling invisible and experiencing constant rejection. Non-binary users report feeling completely excluded from apps built around binary gender categories.

Problem 2: The Safety Issues No One Talks About

Hookup apps have normalised meeting strangers for intimate encounters with minimal vetting. Whilst most encounters are safe, the model creates genuine risks that the platforms themselves do very little to mitigate.

Verification Is Inadequate

Most hookup apps have either no verification system or extremely minimal verification (like confirming an email address). This makes it easy for people to create fake profiles, misrepresent themselves, or operate multiple accounts.

We've heard from UK users who've shown up to meetings and discovered the person looked nothing like their photos, was actually in a relationship (despite claiming to be single), or was significantly older than stated. These aren't just disappointing — in some cases, they're genuinely concerning from a safety perspective.

The Consent Grey Areas

Hookup apps often facilitate extremely rapid escalation — matching, chatting briefly, meeting up, becoming intimate, all within hours. This speed creates situations where consent conversations don't happen properly or where people feel pressure to go along with things they're not comfortable with.

The cultural expectation on hookup apps is that if you're there, you're up for it. This creates pressure to consent by default rather than actively choosing to consent. We've heard particularly from women who feel that expressing boundaries on hookup apps gets them labelled as "time-wasters" or "not actually casual."

Location Sharing Risks

Many hookup apps use location-based matching, showing you people nearby. Whilst this is convenient, it also means you're constantly broadcasting your approximate location to strangers. For people in small communities or with stalkers/abusive exes, this creates real safety concerns.

The Sexual Health Crisis

Hookup apps have coincided with rising STI rates across the UK. Correlation isn't causation, but we've noticed that the apps do very little to encourage sexual health testing, disclosure, or protection use. The focus is entirely on facilitating connections, with health considerations left entirely to users.

We've heard from sexual health professionals in the UK who are increasingly concerned about the gap between the number of partners people have through apps and their actual engagement with sexual health services. Many people are having dozens of partners without regular testing, creating public health concerns.

Problem 3: It's Not Actually Delivering What It Promises

Here's an uncomfortable truth: hookup apps promise effortless casual sex, but for most users, that's not what they deliver. The reality is often frustration, wasted time, and disappointing experiences.

The Gender Experience Gap

Hookup apps work very differently depending on your gender. Women generally get overwhelming interest but much of it is low-effort, copy-paste messages from men who are messaging dozens of women simultaneously. Men generally get very little interest and can send hundreds of messages with minimal responses.

Neither experience is particularly good. Women feel overwhelmed and objectified; men feel invisible and disposable. The apps work well for a small percentage of highly attractive users (mostly men) but create frustrating experiences for most people.

The Photo vs Reality Problem

Because hookup apps are so photo-focused, there's enormous pressure to present the best possible version of yourself. This leads to strategic photo selection, flattering angles, and sometimes outright deception.

The result is that in-person meetings often involve disappointment on one or both sides. We've heard countless stories from UK users about matches who looked completely different in person, or about being on the receiving end of visible disappointment when they don't live up to their photos.

The Chemistry Lottery

Even when photos are accurate, physical attraction in photos doesn't guarantee in-person chemistry. We've spoken to numerous UK users who've had experiences where someone was objectively attractive and the conversation was fine, but there was just... nothing. No spark, no chemistry, no desire to actually follow through.

This makes sense — human attraction is complex and involves things like scent, energy, and subtle social cues that can't be conveyed through apps. But it means that even "successful" matches (where you actually meet up) often don't lead to satisfying encounters.

The Effort vs Reward Calculation

For many UK users, the amount of effort required to actually meet someone suitable through hookup apps is substantial. Hours of swiping, messaging dozens of people, arranging meetups that often get cancelled or lead nowhere, dealing with time-wasters and catfishes.

When we ask people to honestly calculate time invested versus satisfying encounters had, the return on investment is often shockingly poor. Many people are spending 10+ hours per successful hookup, which is hardly the effortless experience the apps promise.

Problem 4: The Algorithmic Manipulation

Let's talk about what's happening behind the scenes on hookup apps, because it's not pretty.

Designed for Engagement, Not Success

Hookup apps are businesses that need you to stay on the app to make money. If everyone quickly found what they were looking for and deleted the app, the business would fail. So the apps are optimised for engagement (keeping you using the app) rather than efficacy (helping you meet people).

This creates perverse incentives. Features that would help you succeed faster (like being able to filter effectively or see who actually wants to meet up) are often paywalled or deliberately limited. Features that keep you engaged but don't lead to results (like showing you profiles of people who haven't been active in weeks) are standard.

The Attractiveness Algorithm

Most hookup apps use attractiveness-based algorithms that show you to more or fewer people based on how many people swipe right on you. This creates a two-tier system where attractive users get shown to everyone whilst less attractive users essentially become invisible.

We've heard from UK users who've realised they're effectively shadow-banned — technically their profile exists, but it's shown to so few people that they get almost no matches. The app never tells you this is happening; you just slowly realise you're invisible.

The Monetisation Pressure

Free users on hookup apps are increasingly having their experience degraded to push them toward paid subscriptions. Limited swipes, restricted messaging, profiles boosted out of view — these are deliberate friction points designed to frustrate you into paying.

But here's the thing: paying often doesn't actually improve your success rate. You get more visibility and more matches, but if those matches weren't interested in you at baseline, making them see you more often doesn't change that. You end up paying for more of the same frustrating experience.

Problem 5: The Cultural Toxicity

Hookup apps haven't just created technical problems — they've fostered genuinely toxic cultural norms within UK dating.

Ghosting as Standard Practice

On hookup apps, ghosting has become so normalised that people don't even think of it as rude anymore. Someone stops responding mid-conversation? Normal. Someone doesn't show up to a planned meetup? Annoying but common. Someone disappears after a hookup? Expected.

We've spoken to UK users who've completely internalised this behaviour as acceptable. When we ask if they'd ghost someone they met in real life through friends, they're horrified at the idea. But someone they met on an app? That's just how it works.

The Efficiency Over Humanity Mindset

Hookup culture on apps has created an efficiency mindset where the goal is to move from match to meetup as quickly as possible with minimal investment. This means cutting corners on getting to know someone, skipping safety precautions, and treating people as means to an end.

This efficiency focus isn't just about saving time — it's about protecting yourself from emotional investment. If you treat people as transactions, you don't have to feel bad when things don't work out. But it also means you miss out on genuine connection, even in casual contexts.

The Judgement and Stigma

Despite hookup culture being ostensibly normalised, we've found there's still significant judgement attached to it, particularly toward women. Women on hookup apps often face the Madonna-whore dichotomy: they're expected to be sexually available but also face stigma for being "too easy."

Men face different judgement — success on hookup apps is treated as validation of masculinity, whilst lack of success is emasculating. This creates enormous pressure and contributes to toxic behaviours like exaggerating success or treating women poorly to prove "alpha" status.

What UK Users Actually Want Instead

So if traditional hookup apps are problematic, what do UK users actually want? We've asked hundreds of people, and the answers are surprisingly consistent:

Honesty Without Judgement

People want to be honest about seeking casual connections without being judged, objectified, or treated as disposable. They want platforms where "casual" doesn't automatically mean "no respect required."

Safety and Verification

Users want better verification systems, safer meeting protocols, and platforms that actually take safety seriously rather than treating it as an afterthought. This includes both physical safety and emotional safety.

Quality Over Quantity

People are tired of endless low-quality matches. They'd rather have fewer matches with people they're genuinely compatible with than hundreds of matches that go nowhere. The abundance mindset that hookup apps create isn't actually what most people want.

Some Substance With The Casual

Even people seeking casual encounters want some baseline compatibility and connection. They want to actually like the person they're hooking up with, to have something to talk about, to feel some genuine chemistry beyond just physical attraction.

Realistic Expectations

Users want platforms that set realistic expectations rather than promising effortless endless casual sex. They want honesty about what's actually achievable and what the experience is really like.

Better Communication Tools

People want apps that facilitate actual communication about expectations, boundaries, and desires rather than just providing a matching service and leaving users to figure everything else out.

The Kommons App Difference

We built Kommons App specifically to address these problems with traditional hookup culture apps. That means:

• Treating people as humans, not commodities: Our design deliberately avoids the shopping-catalogue approach.
• Prioritising safety: Better verification, clearer communication tools, and resources for safe meetups.
• Encouraging honesty: Space to be clear about what you want without judgement or objectification.
• Matching on compatibility: Physical attraction matters, but so does baseline compatibility.
• Optimising for outcomes: We succeed when you meet people you actually like, not when you endlessly engage with the app.

We're not anti-casual dating or anti-hookup culture. We're anti-dehumanisation, anti-exploitation, and anti-toxic cultural norms. Casual dating can be fun, liberating, and fulfilling — but not the way it's currently implemented on most major apps.

Moving Forward

The problems with hookup culture apps aren't going away unless users demand better. As long as people keep using platforms that treat them poorly, those platforms have no incentive to change.

The good news is we're seeing increasing rejection of traditional hookup apps among UK users. People are deleting apps, trying alternatives, and demanding better experiences. This user pushback is creating space for different approaches that prioritise user wellbeing over engagement metrics.

If you're currently using hookup apps and feeling frustrated, disappointed, or like there must be a better way — you're right. There is a better way. It requires platforms willing to prioritise user success over growth metrics, but it's possible.

Casual dating doesn't have to mean dehumanisation, disposability, or toxic culture. It can mean honest, respectful connections between people who are clear about what they want. But achieving that requires choosing platforms that are built with those values from the ground up.