• Like regular body language, digital body language refers to what's unspoken in texts.
• It includes how often a person texts as well as how even a conversation feels.
• A dating expert shared the digital body language signs someone is interested in you.

Conversations on dating apps can be tricky to navigate.

Is it a red flag if a new connection takes three days to respond? Is a text paragraph vulnerable, or self-centered? Does replying with a lone "k" really mean someone hates you?

Logan Ury, the director of relationship science at Hinge, told Business Insider that this is what's known as digital body language (DBL), and it isn't much different from in-person body language, conveying what is unsaid.

Ury said DBL includes "how long somebody waits to respond, whether or not they double-text, what punctuation they use, and if they use emojis."

From her internal research at Hinge, she's learned that users — particularly Gen Zers — rely heavily on DBL to quickly gauge a match's interest in them. Among those daters, there are some widely agreed-upon indicators that a person isn't actually into you, even if they technically always respond to your texts.

To prevent wasting your time on a confusing situationship, "you want to be good at deciphering somebody's DBL," Ury said. She added that it's important to be aware of how you come off when you do like someone, so that they're "not misinterpreting how you feel about them."

She shared some digital body language signs that someone's not really interested in you.

They always respond, but never consistently

Healthy relationships are built on trust and communication. Naturally, daters look for signs of it from the very first message.

According to a 2024 Hinge report surveying 15,000 Gen Z users, Ury said users have a 44% higher chance of getting responses when they answer messages within 24 hours. Their matches sense more seriousness.

This goes beyond the first few messages. She said 76% of users also look for message consistency. Someone who texts for hours one day but then is MIA for three is widely considered as disinterested.

Because of that, she discourages matches from "playing it cool" or delaying responses when they really like someone. "It's much better to just not play games and respond quickly because those people are more likely to get onto dates and into relationships," she said.

Your text bubbles are imbalanced

Deep relationships require reciprocity and a sense of evenness. Beyond timing, Ury said the flow of conversation is a big sign of how interested someone is in you.

But it's about more than just taking turns hitting each other up, Ury said. "For iPhone users, there needs to be that mix between blue and gray" text bubbles, she said. That includes the match "leading with a question and then offering answers that build conversation," she said.

If they write you walls of text without asking anything back, it doesn't indicate that they're interested in knowing who you are. Ury has a term for these people: "ZQ," or "zero questions." ZQs indicate a lack of genuine curiosity to learn more about you, she said.

They're 'bad' at texting, but don't connect in other ways

Not everyone loves texting a lot — plenty of people prefer calls or simply can't be on their phones during the work day.

Ury said that if they're interested, they should be communicating with you about how they want to stay in touch. If they're offline during the workday, they should be transparent about that — and find other ways to share that they're thinking of you, such sending voice notes, memes, or photos of their day.

But if they don't make an effort to be clear about liking you, it comes off like they're not that interested in you.

It's why Ury emphasizes meeting in real life quickly if you hit it off with someone: digital body language isn't a science, and sometimes it's worth having conversations around communication differences.

Plus, the better way to confirm if someone likes you is to meet them in person.

"You need to get to the date as soon as possible," she said. "You don't know if somebody's in-person vibes will match their digital body language."

• Some people are turning to "loyalty tests" to check if their partners are cheating.
• Companies are cashing in, connecting users to testers for a fee.
• Even when someone "passes," a test can pose problems for couples.

It's no secret: Dating in the digital age is hard.

Knowing when to change your Facebook relationship status or "soft launch" your relationship is stressful enough, but the internet has also made cheating easier than ever.

"The digital age has provided a million more ways to cheat or be deceptive or be disloyal in a relationship than in the past," Landis Bejar, a wedding therapist and the founder of AisleTalk, told Business Insider.

Some lovers have turned to "loyalty tests" to see if their partners are faithful, tapping strangers to catch their significant others being disloyal by sending incriminating direct messages, hoping for an untoward reply. Now, companies like Lazo and Loyalty-Test are cashing in on the trend.

One woman who paid to test her partner told Business Insider she wished she had used the service sooner.

Helping others who get cheated on

A tester who goes by Ari on Loyalty-Test for privacy reasons but whose identity is known to BI said she first became familiar with the app as a customer.

"I was the one that wanted to test my partner," she said. "He ended up passing by default. He didn't respond."

Ari said she appreciated the process and became interested in being a tester. So, she signed up.

"In the past, with relationships, I would get a lot of unfaithful partners, and I would have loved to have this sooner," Ari said. "I definitely wanted to be the one to help people out."

Now, Ari works as a hairstylist by day and performs between five and eight loyalty tests weekly. She sticks to digital tests and charges $55 for a day of testing.

"I've noticed people do fold very quickly," she said. "It usually happens within the first day."

Ari said she starts her work with clients by asking what they think of as a pass or fail to ensure they agree.

"Usually, I'll explain the process that I'm going to do, and if they have specific things they want me to say, then I go by what they want me to say," she said.

Some of her clients are in committed relationships and suspect cheating when they hire her. Others are about to take a step with someone, like becoming exclusive or moving in together, and want to use a loyalty test to confirm they're making the right decision.

Ari said it can be difficult when she has to tell clients their partners are failing a test, both because she feels empathy toward them and because she has been cheated on.

"The length that they would go to be sneaky, you know, it's a little triggering sometimes," she said.

'Loyalty tests' are on the rise

Videos about loyalty tests started going viral online around 2021, and they all followed a similar blueprint.

A "tester" messages someone's partner on social media at their request and pretends to want to date them. If the person shows interest in the fake suitor, they fail the test. If they don't, they pass.

As the trend became more popular, companies started offering anonymous tests for a fee.

Lazo began testing potential cheaters in January, Ashlyn Nakasu, the company's community manager, told BI. Lazo's team aims for the app to provide people unfettered access to the truth in a relationship.

Lazo has about 400 checkers that charge a range of fees, though they typically start at $40. For that fee, a tester will message your partner, pretending to be interested in them to see if they cross a boundary.

"You never know if you're actually going to get the whole truth out of people," Nakasu told BI, as many people don't immediately confess if their partner accuses them of cheating.

"We wanted to offer a solution that was more affordable and less time-consuming," Nakasu said, referring to hiring a private investigator. According to the job platform Bark, the average cost of a private investigator in the US is $85 per hour, and their services can range from digital investigation to trailing your partner.

Loyalty-Tests, launched in January 2023, offers digital and in-person tests for a fee set by the testers. As founder and CEO Brandan Balasingham told BI, testers sign up to work for the company on the app like Uber drivers. The company then sifts through applicants to see who would be a good tester before they get approved to take on clients.

Some testers charge as little as $10 for a digital test, but the in-person tests, in which a tester meets up with a potential cheater at a client's direction, can cost upward of $500.

As of November 2024, Balasingham said Loyalty-Test averaged 10 to 20 customers daily.

Both Lazo and Loyalty-Tests said their clients are seeing real results.

Nakasu said 60% of Lazo users' partners pass the loyalty tests. Balasingham said the latest data from Loyalty-Tests shows a discrepancy between the results of men and women being tested. About 60% of men fail, while around 30% of women do.

Establish trust early

Although loyalty tests have become popular, Bejar said they shouldn't be the norm in a healthy relationship.

"There's no relationship without trust," Bejar said. "If we don't have trust, we have to completely manage another person and oversee another person to ensure they're going to do what they say they are. And that can't work in a relationship."

Dramatic acts like cheating can erode trust, but smaller "ruptures," as Bejar calls them, like not doing something you said you would or telling white lies, can damage the bond between you and your partner just as easily.

In that sense, conducting a loyalty test against your partner can be a betrayal in the same way that cheating is. Whether someone passes a loyalty test or not, the relationship is likely in trouble if someone feels the need to conduct one.

Bejar does think there are some situations where a loyalty test could be helpful, though, particularly in an abusive relationship.

"If a loyalty test can break someone out of that kind of contrived reality that an abusive person has created for them, that by definition is really hard to get out of, then I think there's a place for it," Bejar said.

Still, if you want to use a loyalty test instead of organically building trust with your partner over time, Bejar said that's likely a sign you need to reflect on why building trust seems hard. She added that you should set boundaries with your partner to ensure you agree on the definition of betrayal.

"Love can be blinding, and we can overlook things," she said. "You need to know what a dealbreaker is to you so that if you are in love with somebody and they cross one of your boundaries, you can walk away even though it's hard and sad."

• Dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge have new competition.
• A slew of new apps have launched in 2024 and are taking on swipe fatigue and dating-app burnout.
• Business Insider has interviewed several founders of the newest dating startups entering the ring.

Dating apps are in for a shake-up.

Many users are tired of swiping, dating app giants like Match Group (which owns Tinder and Hinge) face headwinds, and new startups are launching left and right.

Business Insider has interviewed several founders jumping into the dating-app arena as incumbents lose their luster.

Read: Meet the founders behind 11 dating startups

The new crop of dating apps is tackling various pain points in the online dating experience.

Some, for instance, are experimenting with new ways to discover and meet singles (aka not swiping). That includes startups offering users only a small batch of profiles to review each day, such as the New York-based app Pique Dating.

Others are testing how to successfully incorporate artificial intelligence into dating, like Sitch, which offers a chatbot and matchmaking feature powered by AI.

Matchmaking, whether through AI or by friends and family, has also become one of the hottest buzzwords in the dating-startup world.

There's also a wave of IRL-focused startups that forgo the experience of a dating app entirely with in-person events bringing singles together.

Read: The loneliness epidemic has given rise to a new crop of startups aiming to help people connect in real life

Meanwhile, social startups that aren't branded around dating — like Posh, 222, and Pie — are also breeding grounds for new friendships in person that could lead to love down the line as young adults seek to meet people in more organic settings. (Several of these IRL-social startups have also raised venture-capital funding this year.)

Even Big Tech is getting in on the action, with Facebook continuing to expand its Facebook Dating feature and Instagram's long-standing role as a digital flirting mechanism.

Read more about new dating startups launching to compete with Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble:

• Fourplay, a dating app that lets people go on double dates.
• First Round's On Me, which prioritizes setting up dates over DMs.
• Several new dating startups, like Cheers, Sitch, and Arrange are launching apps with matchmaking features.
• 222 is not branded as a dating app, but sets up strangers on group dinners in New York and Los Angeles.

• Would you trust your friends to curate your dating-app matches?
• Several new "matchmaking" dating apps have launched in the past year, addressing dating-app fatigue.
• Startups like Sitch and Cheers are using AI and social connections to match users.

Matching and matches are everyday phrases in the online dating app lexicon. But matchmaking? Less so.

That may be changing.

A slew of new startups have launched in the past few months centered around matchmaking in the age of swipe fatigue.

Sitch, an AI-powered matchmaking app launched in New York in November. Cheers, an app that lets friends play matchmaker in a social-media feed, launched in October. Facebook Dating even launched a matchmaking feature last month.

Matchmaking is by no means a new invention. People have relied on matchmakers for centuries, and have sometimes been willing to pay thousands of dollars to be paired by one.

Tinder's cofounder and former CEO, Sean Rad, told Harry Stebbings on a September episode of the 20VC podcast that he had always imagined the dating app moving beyond swiping and into matchmaking. Rad described an ideal version of Tinder where the app was trained well enough to suggest the right "person for you," he said on the podcast.

Big dating apps have previously dabbled in matchmaking. In 2017, Hinge (just before it was acquired by Match Group in 2018) launched a stand-alone app called Matchmaker that let friends swipe for each other. It appears to have since shut down. Tinder, also owned by Match Group, launched a similar feature in 2023.

The current trend of new matchmaking apps generally splits into two categories: Either the users themselves are doing the matchmaking, or the app (typically built with AI) is matching users directly.

Friends and family become matchmakers

Handing over the reins to your dating profile to friends and family may seem daunting, but several startups are betting on this form of matchmaking.

Loop, founded by siblings Lian and Adam Zucker, is a "matchmaking app where everyone can set up their single friends," Lian said. Only two-thirds of the user base are singles, though, Lian told BI, explaining that the rest are friends and family members — or even professional or hobbyist matchmakers. Loop launched in 2023 and is currently free for all users.

An app that's set to launch in December, called Arrange, is built around a similar premise. Developed by former Fizz staffers Ram Chirimunj and Zoe Mazakas, the app will let users link their profiles with a "scout," likely a trusted friend or family member, who can talk with potential matches ahead of time and vet for compatibility.

"I thought back on all my relationships and realized that they were all made by friend introductions," Chirimunj said. "I wanted to see how we could bring that authenticity from the real world onto a dating platform."

But some startups that offer matchmaking tools, like Cheers, recognize many people don't want to spend all their time matching on behalf of their friends — no matter how much they love them. Sahil Ahuja, an ex-Instagram engineer and founder of Cheers, is trying to bridge the gap between dating and social media with a friend-of-a-friend social graph. The app, which he describes as a crossover between Hinge and Instagram, is free and currently invite-only.

On Cheers, if a user spots someone they may want to go on a date with, they can send a request to their mutual friend on the app to make the introduction. Non-dating users can also send profiles or start group chats with mutual friends to kick off a connection.

"Because it's more social, it lends itself well to solving this more organically and feeling more like how you would date in real life through friends," Ahuja told BI.

Let AI do the matchmaking for you

Some newer dating apps (like Hawk Tuah Girl's app called Pookie or Rizz) are riding the tailwinds of the AI hype with chatbots that help people flirt, troubleshoot dating conundrums, and connect.

Sitch, for example, offers an AI chatbot experience where users can ask questions about dating. Users can also answer a series of intimate questions about their interests, values, and backgrounds that contribute to a profile within the app. The app then offers users potential "setups," where the AI will introduce two users.

"We've tried to replicate the exact human flow of matchmaking," Sitch cofounder Nandini Mullaji — who has experience in matchmaking friends of friends IRL — told BI.

Sitch launched in November exclusively in New York — but there's still a waitlist to get approved. Users can then pay for "setups," which cost $150 for three pairings.

Amori, a dating-advice app with characters users can chat with, is also experimenting with its own form of matchmaking using a personal assistant (though it isn't live within the app yet).

"We're trying to nail down the dating advice side of it with the coach," Amori's founder, Alex Weitzman, told BI. Down the line, Amori's AI dating coach will help users find potential matches through the app.

Will it really work?

Despite the string of new apps, New York City matchmaker Nick Rosen said he thinks it won't be easy for friends and family to find users a perfect match.

Rosen said he typically works with a roster of 20 to 30 people at a time and keeps a rolodex of 3,000 available singles in New York City for his clients to meet.

When he starts working with a client, he does an extensive intake of a person's romantic history, which he says is an advantage of a professional matchmaker. Friends and family know you well, but maybe they don't know the entirety of your dating history and scars.

"People open up to me like a therapist," Rosen said.

Though friends and family might be excited at first to play Cupid, the exhausting reality of helping someone find love can wear off, Rosen said.

Still, he thinks matchmakers need to change with the times.

"If we want to make matchmaking more approachable and cooler to people, we need to go and start having our own apps," he said.