Putting Your Best Self or No Self at All? an Analysis of Young Adult’s Dating App Profiles in Turkey

Abstract

Since the widespread use of dating apps across the globe, presenting one’s best self has become a prior issue in attracting potential partners. The literature generally focuses on a single group’s profiles on a single app and examines the role of gender and sexual orientation in putting one’s best face and body or lying about it. However, very few studies draw attention to the role of cultural geography in profile construction, which may suggest that presenting a self in the first place, or self-disclosure, becomes a more significant issue than presenting an ideal self in some cultural settings. This study examines young adults’ profiles on five dating apps popular in Turkey, where there is a powerful social stigma around LGBTI+ individuals and online dating and a sharp cultural division between Eastern and Western regions. It aims to understand the role of cultural geography across users from different genders and sexual orientations in self-disclosure. Based on a quantitative content analysis of 1976 dating app profiles collected across the country, our study finds statistically significant differences in self-disclosure between men and women, heterosexual and non-heterosexual users, and metropolitan and non-metropolitan individuals. In other words, showing one’s face, body, and other verbal information that might reveal one’s identity is highly influenced by one’s gender, sexual orientation, and geographical location. Our research contributes to the literature by not only underlining the significance of cultural geography but also revealing the intersecting role of gender, sexual orientation, and geographical location in self-disclosure. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2025.