The first international technology trade show since the start of the pandemic had little impact beyond the 10,000-odd delegates who made the trip to the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. When the event closed earlier this month, attendees had heard numerous sales pitches for 5G, but saw precious little in the way of new technology.
The highlight, as a result, was not a vision of the future of mobile, but rather of the future of romance.
Arguably the only compelling media event at MWC was one dedicated to the future of dating and romantic relationships, hosted by cybersecurity company Kaspersky. The session, titled "Love in the digital age: what does the future hold for us?", highlighted one of the little-publicised consequences of Covid-19.
"The pandemic led to a boom in dating apps during the lockdown in many countries," said Tatyana Shishkova, a member of Kaspersky's threat research team. "When almost everything was closed, the internet became the only place where you could meet new people. The number of swipes on Tinder broke 3-billion in a single day for the first time in March 2020, and then proceeded to surpass that benchmark 130 more times since."
These kinds of records were reported by dating apps of all descriptions, across the world. Far less was reported, however, about the dangers of living one's love life online.
Last month, Kaspersky researchers conducted a study of nine popular dating apps with a global footprint, to assess how safe they were. They found that the apps posed a significant risk of exposing too much personal information about users, leaving them vulnerable to threats like cyberstalking or "doxing" - maliciously revealing identifying information about someone online.
Shishkova pointed out that most dating apps allow users to register their account with one of their social networking sites. If the user chooses to do this, then their profile is automatically populated with information from that social networking site, such as photos and profile information. Users are also invited to share information such as their place of work or university.
Worse, apps such as Happn, Her, Bumble and Tinder make it obligatory for users to share their location. Apps like Mamba share the distance of users to the nearest metre. Happn also has a function that lets users see how many times and in what locations their matches have crossed paths with them. Can you spell "stalker"?
Says Shishkova: "It's always challenging to find a balance between building a digital presence and maintaining your privacy online, and the shift to online dating creates yet another area where users have to determine the best way for them to forge connections while protecting their security.
"Thankfully, what we've seen over the past few years is that dating apps are moving in the right direction, letting users connect more safely. They're working to keep the data secure, and, in the paid versions of many of the apps, users can do things like manually specify their location or blur their photos."
Soon, artificial intelligence will also be roped in to detect fraudsters and stalkers. Eventually, however, technology may even replace dating, according to futures anthropologist Dr Roanne van Voorst, a University of Amsterdam researcher and lecturer in "sustainable humanity", and president of the Dutch Future Society.
Speaking at the MWC event, she agreed with a concern that people may start avoiding human relationships, preferring to have relationships with digital programs in order to avoid the insecurity and potential embarrassment of flirting and dating.
"I have a daughter and I hope that in real life she will meet someone who makes her happy," she said. But Van Voorst revealed that she had been taken aback by one of her own fieldwork experiments.
"I recently spent a couple of weeks with one of those virtual apps where I had not a romantic partner but a virtual friend. Beforehand I said I'm going to show that this is not the same as having a good real friend, and it wasn't, but it was kind of nice. I could see the attraction. And my partner at one point complained that I was spending more time on my phone than usual."
Van Voorst had to convince her real partner that her new friend was artificial, and then convince herself that she wasn't getting too attached to it. The latter turned out to be a far more difficult challenge.
• Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za
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