Forget Tinder – this is why dating is better on Instagram

If your usual method is to swap numbers after meeting in a bar or on an app, you’re doing it wrong, cautions Franki Cookney. You really should be Insta-dating…

Some users don’t exchange phone numbers for the entire first year of their relationship (Getty Images)

If you meet someone on a night out, do you ask for their number? If you match with someone on a dating app, do you move the chat to WhatsApp? If the answer is yes, I’m sorry to say you’re out of touch. These days, the slickest move is to follow each other on Instagram.

According to Instagram’s 2024 trends report, over a quarter of Gen Zs globally make the first move by swapping Instagrams. Frankly, I’m surprised it’s taken them so long to notice.

In our digital-first world, it’s only ever a matter of time before any given platform becomes a cruising spot. The New York Times reported on it in 2017. LGBT+ folks have been using Instagram for dating for years, with many claiming the photo and video-sharing network was “the new Grindr”. DIVA magazine even published a guide to hooking up via the app.

So the idea of posting thirst traps, of orbiting people you fancy, of flirtation-by-fire-emoji, of dropping occasional, well-timed responses to their Stories and gradually building up a rapport, is certainly not unfamiliar territory.

Insta-dating is particularly common in the UK and US, where young people say it feels more casual and less intrusive than giving out a phone number. When I DM’d (naturally) my Gen Z friend and fellow sex writer Beth Ashley, she told me she and her now-husband didn’t have each other’s numbers for almost the entire first year of their relationship. “I would find it wild if someone asked for my phone number,” she said. “It’s so personal; it would just feel really invasive, like being asked for your address.”

To me, a millennial, Instagram is for networking, making friends, mingling and – yes, definitely flirting– but when I want to actually get to know someone, when that person enters my life for real, I’ve tended to transition them to my phone book. After chatting to Beth, I’m cringing at my apparently archaic attitude. Luckily, it’s not too late for me (and indeed you) to update our strategies!

When done right, Instagram offers a genuine snapshot of our lives and personalities and, as such, it can be a low-stakes way to offer up a bit more information about ourselves and peek into each other’s worlds. We get a more rounded view of each other, and the getting-to-know-you stage feels less intense than the often slightly forced chats on dating apps. We can start conversations, drop them, and pick them up again easily because there’s always new content to share and interact with.

If, like many people, you use Instagram for work, you might want to consider setting up an alt account or “finsta” to share personal content (I don’t mean nudes; Meta has notoriously trigger-happy deletion policies around anything that skirts close to being adult content). This does require some effort though. “For years, I would send matches my Insta and they’d be greeted by a whole page of exquisite graphic and motion design and not a single thirst trap,” another friend jokes when I ask him about his experience of Insta-dating. “I tried having a finsta but it was so much labour.”

Curating an Instagram profile purely for this purpose feels at odds with the casual authenticity that is Insta-dating’s core appeal. In fact, one might argue the same effect could be achieved with… wait for it… a dating app. But you can circumnavigate this by adding the object of your affections to your Close Friends list. The function allows users to share Stories with a select few, and is, Instagram reports, one of the top methods Gen Z use to flirt on the app. That way you can share personal pictures and videos without worrying about looking unprofessional.

To build up the relationship, you want to be liking and occasionally commenting on your crush’s Story, sending them reels or memes by direct message, and liking the posts on their feed. And, as and when a date is secured, you could also consider showing your affection by soft-launching them in the form of a tag in your Story or photo dump.

Admittedly, it can be hard to sort out the flirts from the genuine followers: Are they trying to get in my pants, or did they just really enjoy that GRWM reel I made? Then again, we face the same dilemma in real life.

No matter how we choose to meet and date people, there’s always a certain amount of energy that goes into interpreting their behaviour, reading the room, and summoning the courage to shoot your shot.

Online or offline, building new relationships is a vulnerable business, and if sharing a few memes and scattering a few heart emojis helps bring a bit of levity to the experience, personally, I’m all for it.