There was an episode of Hack this week where they were talking about how abusive behaviours were causing a decline in dating app usership. This is 100% a contributing factor and I think it might even be the most important factor, but that isn't the entire story.
The other part of this is that most dating apps just fucking suck now, even aside from other people sucking. Ten or fifteen years ago, they were at least usable because every feature you'd need for a usable experience was available with a freebie account. Nowadays, you have to pay for even the most basic features.
Even if you had an overall good experience on dating apps, a lot of people just wouldn't be as interested in using them anymore because of that. Yeah, maybe they had a few good dates or even a good relationship because they were on OKCupid or whatever in 2014 or so, but was the experience on the site itself so good that they'd pay to use it again? Because even if you didn't have an overall negative experience, you'd still be going through a laundry list of people who apparently had the personality of a plain cardboard box just to get to the few people you were actually interested in, right? Would you knowingly pay for that privilege?
Plus, I think people are more aware that it's not in the economic interest of these sites for people to find long-term relationships. It's better for the sites if you have a bunch of dud dates because then you'll keep using their sites. So while once upon a time if you found someone who was a 98% match, you might actually hit it off with that person, nowadays that person might be the single most insufferable person you've ever heard of.
I don't think that's an insignificant angle to this. It might not be the main reason people aren't using dating apps as much anymore, but it's not a fringe concern, either. On one hand, there are a lot of genuinely abusive people who are getting away with it through these sites, and on the other hand, the best possible user experience is still a grinding, tedious monotony that they have to pay for.
