Gone with the wind: Exploring mobile daters’ ghosting experiences
Elisabeth Timmermans, Department of Media Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Van der Groot Building, 8th floor, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, 3062 PA Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Email: [email protected]
Abstract
This study explores 328 mobile daters’ (63% females; 86% heterosexuals) experiences with ghosting, using both open- and close-ended questions. First, we used thematic analysis to explore mobile dating app users’ motivations to ghost, the reported consequences of experiencing ghosting and reported strategies to cope with having been ghosted. Next, quantitative analyses were carried out to predict the likelihood of ghosting other users and which factors contribute to experiencing ghosting as more painful. As both our qualitative and quantitative analyses suggest, experiencing ghosting on a dating app can be quite painful and has an impact on users’ self-esteem and mental well-being. However, our findings on ghosters’ motives also stress a nuanced perspective on ghosting behavior, given that it is not necessarily done with harmful or conscious intent. As such, our findings also hold practical implications given that insights into mechanisms to cope with ghosting can help dating app users to rationalize their ghosting experience and thus limit its impact.
Recently, the practice of ghosting has been receiving more academic attention and has been commonly described as unilaterally cutting off contact with a partner and ignoring their attempts to reach out, commonly enacted via one or multiple technological medium(s) (Freedman et al., 2019; Le). Given that researchers attribute its occurrence to media technologies, ghosting is generally described as a new breakup strategy, despite that some aspects of ghosting are similar to existing breakup strategies found in the literature on breakup strategies. Continue reading →
