Tinder dating app being used more and more by middle-aged mums and dads

The number of 35 to 44-year-olds on the app has doubled since April

Tinder, the mobile dating app set upon by young people across the globe, is enjoying a surge in a new market: middle-aged users.

Known predominantly as a dating app suitable for setting up casual encounters, Tinder is becoming increasingly popular with those aged between 35 and 44.

The number of users in this age group has doubled from 6.5 per cent to 12 per cent since April alone according to The Times, while three per cent of the app’s 50 million users are now aged between 45 and 54.

“It’s frictionless, that’s why people like it,” Willard Foxton, a dating blogger and technology writer told The Times, adding that middle-aged people often “do not want to take dating too seriously”.

“The 35-year-olds are the last digital immigrants, the last age group who were adults before the internet was properly mainstream. Think about Facebook, it used to be just young people, and now your mum and dad have joined too,” he added.

The app, which lets users swipe left or right to determine whether they like or dislike a potential match based on their pictures and a brief bio, has only been in operation for two years, but it reportedly sees 13 million matches a day.

People log into it as many as 11 times per day, with women spending around 8.5 minutes on the app in each session, and men up to 7.2 minutes.

Tinder is set to launch a paid-for, premium service this month, in which users will be able to undo mistakes when they swiped in the wrong direction by accident, or to change their location for matching with users.