The lonely guessing work: A social critique of opaque algorithms on dating apps

Many dating-app users can feel lonely despite their effort to search for a match. Addressing this problem, I draw upon Fuchs and Sevignani’s theorizing of digital work to propose the idea of guessing work—users’ effort to make sense of algorithmic dating experiences without clear, structured guidance. Guessing work offers a heuristic lens through which I argue that social vulnerabilities, convoluted technological perceptions, and maladaptive technology use on dating apps are deeply entangled with each other. Cluster and partial correlation analyses of a sample of 282 single dating-app users (age range: 18 to 58 years, M = 27 years) characterized users with simple versus convoluted algorithm perceptions and showed that loneliness, algorithm perception complexity, and compulsive dating-app use were positively related to each other. Findings highlight the heuristic value of guessing work in making sense of loneliness and other negative experiences among dating-app users.