Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
In a bid to boost fertility levels, Iran and Japan have recently launched their own dating apps, with more countries likely to follow. The aim of this article is to consider whether state-run dating apps are morally desirable, which is a question that has not received any scholarly attention.
It finds that such apps have at least two benefits that collectively, if not individually, render their introduction to be welcomed provided certain conditions are met. Several objections are discussed and shown to be unconvincing as arguments against state-run dating apps tout court , including the objection that for states to offer their own dating apps is unduly expensive; the objection that it gives them too much power; and the objection that they should invest in creating offline opportunities for meeting potential partners instead.
Given their already considerable and rising popularity β for example, it is estimated that by , more British couples will have met on dating apps than in real life Sasidhara et al.
In this article, my aim is to consider whether state-run dating apps are morally desirable, which is a question has not received any scholarly attention. Whether these conditions are, or could foreseeably be, met within various contemporary societies requires in-depth empirical research that I cannot begin to undertake here; that said, I am reasonably optimistic that the answer is affirmative for those with strong institutional and legal safeguards against abuses of governmental power, such as the Scandinavian countries.
