‘There are people on Grindr who do a lot of harm’: How an app shaped the sex life of a generation

While the drop in subscribers, downloads, and the valuation of Tinder or Bumble suggests that dating apps are going through a delicate moment, Grindr — the geolocation‑based app created in 2009 by entrepreneur Joel Simkhai to connect the LGBTQ+ community — is experiencing a boom. This is despite months of complaints from its users that the free version is a nightmare to use.

An analysis by GfK DAM, the official digital consumption measurement firm in Spain, indicates that Grindr attracts 635,600 monthly visitors, 30% more than the previous year. “Although it doesn’t lead in unique users, Grindr’s usage is very intensive, being the site where users spend the most time: 10 hours and 12 minutes per month per person,” they add.

A whole generation of queer men began exploring their emotional and sexual lives through the app, and many celebrities have spoken openly about their experiences with it. Olympic medalist Gus Kenworthy confessed to Vanity Fair that at the 2012 London Games, “Grindr crashed.”

Australian singer Troye Sivan didn’t have such a positive experience. On one occasion, a date, upon seeing him in person, rushed to reopen the app to find someone else to meet. Sivan also told the publication I+D that his first encounters on Grindr weren’t exactly the healthiest. “My heart must have been going a million miles an hour,” he said. “I don’t remember specifically but, because I was always so small, I was so scared to meet up with people because I was like, ‘I’m going to get killed.’”

Just recently, in Le Monde, Alice Raybaud wrote a report on how Grindr shapes the sexuality of young gay men and how they are now questioning the influence the platform — and its macho norms — had on their emotional development.

“In the gay world, the body is the currency. Everything revolves around the flesh: torsos, filters, roles. Validation is measured in glances, matches, and meters of distance. We were raised to compete for desire, not tenderness. In the body market, asking for affection sounds like a system failure,” reads an Instagram post by Untoxic Mag. “As if emotional need were a crack that must be hidden. But the body also has a memory, and what it asks for isn’t always pleasure: sometimes it’s warmth, care, presence. There’s no algorithm that can replace that.”

Matias C, a surgeon, tells EL PAÍS that Grindr is an app where violence has become normalized. “They ask you, without even saying ‘hello,’ what your nationality is, how big your penis is, and whether you prefer to be on top or bottom. Receiving videos of people having sex or pornographic photos right away, without even having said hello, is violent.” Grindr’s rules, however, ask users to only send this type of material when there is consent and the other person has requested or agreed to view it. Whether the rules are actually followed is another matter.

“I consider myself very sexual, but this has nothing to do with freedom,” Matías C. continues. “This isn’t a moralistic message: I love sex and I like to actively enjoy it. But to have sex, I need certain minimums. I’m interested in knowing the person’s name and making sure I’m going to feel comfortable and that I’m going to a safe space.”

He adds that, like all apps, Grindr is a factory for creating needs. “Everyone talks about titillation and fetishes, but in reality, they are chains and needs created by the patriarchy. Of course, the bodies that abound on the app are normative, and they are glorified. What gay man doesn’t have a trainer or a gym membership these days?” he asks.

Seventeen years after its launch, the app has become a phenomenon that is as everyday as it is controversial. Grindr has transformed the way people meet and desire in the digital age, but alongside its success, debate persists: many credit it with fueling a culture of immediacy, where casual encounters became the norm and the rules of the game were changed forever. In 2024, outlets like Dazed even wondered whether, rather than simply changing sex between men, it had ruined it for good.

At the same time, critics point out that the platform has not escaped the tensions of the real world: power dynamics, stereotypes, and inequalities — whether patriarchal, racial, or class‑based — have also found their reflection there. At that intersection of freedom, technology, and controversy, the app continues to set the pace for a generation.

“We’ve been raised with the idea that we can choose whatever we want, whenever we want, and however we want,” explains a user named Javier, who works in journalism. “And that’s why, ultimately, Grindr is mostly used as a hookup app, but it wasn’t originally created for that purpose. It was created because we lived in a situation of stigma. It’s become an app where men forget that we’re talking to a human being who has feelings, who might be looking for different things, or who has much broader needs than quick, superficial sex.”

Javier is also critical of the messages many users include in their bios. “They put texts that can make people feel bad. I’m confident in myself — I know what I have and what I don’t — but there are profiles where they write things like ‘no Latinos,’ ‘no Asians’… They could be hurting a lot of people who might be going through a difficult time or have insecurities,” he says.

Manuel J. Romero, a journalist, adds that anyone who doesn’t have a normative body has to be “very mentally prepared to go on Grindr.” “You’re taking the step of trying to meet someone when, because of your body, it’s already complicated in real life. You open Grindr and you find a hostile place. And it’s not just hostile about your looks — like when you write to someone, and they reply, ‘No, you’re fat’ — but people even attack you for no reason,” he tells EL PAÍS.

“I’ve received many derogatory messages from people,” he continues. “From passive-aggressive ‘what a shame; if you lost a few pounds, you’d be gorgeous,’ to very direct comments like ‘I don’t know what you’re doing here, you’re taking up space so I can get someone else who isn’t fat,’ or even things like ‘disgusting fatso.’ You learn not to let it bother you over the years, but it undermines your morale. For years now, I haven’t dared to meet up with anyone without first telling them, very specifically, about my body type.”

Jordi S., an IT specialist, notes that while the app promotes certain stereotypes, this has become a dynamic within the community in real life too. “The comments haven’t particularly been my problem. On Grindr, the code of silence usually prevails if you don’t fit someone else’s preferences. But it’s only a matter of time before you realize you’ve become a kink. If someone talks to you, it’s because your condition is their fetish, not because of who you are. And the feeling ends up being one of conformity. If you’re not normative, you have to settle for whoever decides to talk to you. And let’s not even mention that once you become a fetish, it’s rare for someone to decide to maintain contact after something happens. Once the fetish is satisfied, you don’t offer anything more to that person,” he explains.

Javier also mentions profiles that specify they’re not looking for effeminate men. “We’ve been so conditioned to believe we have to be alpha males that femininity is punished. It’s also common for them to ask how big your penis is before meeting up. Well, honey, I don’t know, I’m not 15, I don’t measure it...” he says.

Writer Nando López indicates that “femmophobia” is nothing more than a sadly widespread form of sexism and homophobia. “Unfortunately, it’s also present within the LGBTQ+ community. The only thing that happens on Grindr is that, under the false pretext of sexual preferences, some people explicitly express prejudices that they wouldn’t verbalize in their everyday speech. But I don’t think the platform forces a mindset; it only reflects it. It’s up to us to change it,” he says.

Thibault Lambert, author of Ce que Grindr a fait de nous (What Grindr Has Done to Us), says that while writing the book and speaking with healthcare professionals—doctors, psychologists, and sexologists—about the app, they all told him that Grindr was a recurring topic in their sessions. “So much so, that it seemed like it was just another patient,” he says.

Nando López stresses that these platforms are simply tools, and how they work depends on how we use them. Today, objectification and hypersexualization are shaping the way we form connections both on and off Grindr. “It’s not enough to blame an app for the problem of dehumanization in our relationships—something that doesn’t only affect the LGBTQ+ community, but all forms of sexual‑affective orientation," he says. “We need a much deeper analysis, because these apps are born from a society in which even affection and sex are lived through an ultracapitalist lens, where we consume bodies as if they were just another object. And that reflects a broader dynamic and a much more complex way of thinking, in which apps like Grindr or Tinder are simply a cog in the system.”

Lambert believes it would be interesting to try to understand why this app—which many men consider essential to their lives—also causes so much suffering. “I find it a bit utopian to expect a better Grindr in the near future. Grindr has every incentive not to over‑moderate content, because that’s precisely what makes the platform appealing. There’s a certain freedom of tone, and the possibility of expressing very specific — even almost uncompromising — preferences. It’s still up to users themselves to report offensive or even illegal comments,” he explains.

“There won’t be a better Grindr until there is both a collective and individual reckoning with our ideas about masculinity, about what counts as a desirable body, and about the fetishization that shapes our dynamics of desire. We need to question our desires and how they affect our encounters.”

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