Would 5 Inches Change Your Life?

Tinder added a height filter. I was already studying height on dating apps--so here's what I've found.

I wasn’t planning on writing about this for a while, but recently Tinder announced they are testing out a new height filter that will enable women to filter out men who are too tall for them so they can get easier access to the short kings. Just kidding! Short guys are pretty worried about this.

Tinder isn’t the first app to test or launch a height filter. Bumble has had this option for a while now. The chart below (not mine) gets into what this looks like—basically, even a moderately tall 5’11” guy would still not be included in 70% of the feeds of women who use height filters. But of course, not all women do (it makes sense that a woman who chooses to use height filters would have high standards for height.) Also, this is a paid feature only for premium users.

While preferring tall men is nothing new, dating apps make this preference a harder line than meeting in person. In person, you might meet a shorter or average-height guy, hit it off, and his height may be an afterthought. But if women are given the option to filter out men under 6’0”, or even men under 5’9”, they could very well be missing out on great guys. I’ve said before that dating short men (or even average height men) is a cheat code for a woman—there are plenty of attractive, interesting guys who have way less competition because they’re not tall.

But you can’t help what turns you on, and if you’re truly incapable of being attracted to a man under 6’0”, that kind of just sucks for everyone involved (and yes, I think the same is true of men who have very specific weight, boob or age preferences.) But I have a feeling that these standards are a bit mushier in real life than online.

When this story came out, I was already experimenting with this exact topic. A week ago, I started a dating app simulation (which is still taking participants and still live for use!) Participants were shown men’s images alongside a name (typically fake), a job, an age and a height, and were told to specify whether they would “swipe right” in a hypothetical dating app environment. But for half of these people, one variable was changed. For example, take this lovely volunteer, Will (not his real name), a 36-year-old software engineer (who is 5’11” in real life.) Ladies, Will is single for real, just FYI. Anyway, some women were shown his photo with all of that information. But others were shown a version of him where he was 5’6”.