Is Tinder and Plenty of Fish the next big fad for sugar babies?

By Maria Baker

“Sugar dating” may seem like a term fished out of an erotica novel to the average eye, but to a lot more people than you think, it is a way of living. As soon as you dig around on the web a little, you’re immediately greeted with several Youtube video results that lead you into a rabbit hole filled with the abundance of titles in the likes of: “how to use tinder to find a sugar daddy, it’s super easy!” While others go on to share the fruits of their labour by reviewing their successful experience. With such a popular question that seems to be dancing around and being requested frequently, it does beg the question, are hookup apps such as Tinder and Plenty of Fish the new scene for the average sugar baby? 

But what is the very definition of “sugar dating” exactly? In layman’s terms, it’s when a “sugar baby” usually a young woman or a young gay man connects with a “sugar daddy” an older man (or sugar mama, if an older woman) generally with a substantial amount of income. They offer gifts and money in return for companionship, sexual favours, or a mix of all in between. It all depends on the set of conditions between them.

Tinder and Plenty of Fish and the like are more often noticed by the average person on the dating scene, but you may not have heard of SeekingArrangement as much. The reason you ask? SeekingArrangement is predominantly geared towards monetised dating, especially for sugar dating, whereas the average hookup app is open for a much broader crowd. SeekingArrangement has got another difference, and it is its extortionate price for a soon to be a sugar daddy to sign up he has to rake up $99. This on top of an additional fee if they would want a heartier serving of benefits given on the site. There is a more significant benefit for being a sugar baby on there. You are not only able to sign up for free but also as the site encourages to help university students that may be drowning in loans, it will present you with a free premium membership if you sign up with a university email. But with such generous benefits, why are some sugar babies jumping ship or going straight to the average hookup app instead? The appeal of Tinder and Plenty of Fish may have a thing or two to do with efficiency, privacy, and features that speciality websites lack or don’t do as well at. 

For instance, focusing on Tinder more closely first, this has a good and easy set up for age, gender and location range. Tinder also has the ability to set you up as a priority if you can spare a few coins, the message you send is then sent to the top of the recipient’s inbox so you can be seen quicker which, for a sugar baby who needs to speed up the whole process, it’s a benefit. Though Tinder may mean having to scour through a lot more to find specific people that are looking for the same thing as you, on the bright side, it also means it broadens the pool to those that aren’t even actively seeking to sugar date but might have piqued their interest in trying out. For the sugar babies that are doing it as a side hustle, the desktop version is very useful for the multi-tasker. If you’re maybe at university or work, you can quickly switch onto their work mode function make your screen looking you’re working on google docs. 

Plenty of Fish may have a more obvious reason for its use for sugar babies. For starters, within the app, you’re allowed to contact any other user that you may not have even matched. It’s also great for those on a budget. The searching criteria include searching up income which is a bonus for those looking for sugar daddies that have a profit in a higher bracket. Unlike most other apps, there is no section to add or to sign in using social media which is key to a sugar baby for safety and privacy. The age range is quite vast with up to 14 years of an age gap between you and your potential connection (if you’re under the age of 22 this is cut to 9 years). 

Now if we look at the majority of users that currently use Tinder. According to BusinessofApps.com for 2020, the demographic in the UK is 27% of 19-24-year-olds using it, 28% are 25-34, and 15% are 35-44 which is the estimate sliding scale of the ages of the average sugar baby and lower age bracket of sugar daddies out there. There’s a drastic difference between the user demographics between the two sites. Datingrankings.com states: Tinder having a 49:51 of an almost perfect ratio balance of male to female users whereas SA as 20:80 in favour of female users, it begs to question whether there is a struggle of finding sugar daddies on speciality sites, unlike hookup sites.

So if Tinder is the most popular in the 19-34 bracket, there is likely to be quite an amount of current university students, which aligns with SeekingArrangment themselves that had stated on their site that over 50,000 students in the UK signed up since 2015. If a hefty amount of sugar babies are university students that prefer or already have hook up apps much like Tinder, it’s a low hanging fruit and obvious and more natural choice if they were to switch to sugar dating suddenly. It’s also effective for expanding the sugar dating pool, it’s quicker and more useful as a side hustle, it’s faster and more instant which is the given mentality of the majority of those in that age group thanks to our avid use of the rapid world of social media. 

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