Online dating has become the norm for meeting people.

Key numbers: 40% of all relationships in the U.S. now start online, and nearly 70% of individuals who met someone on a dating app said it led to a romantic, exclusive relationship.

What you need to know: Safety remains top of mind for Match Group, the parent company of Tinder, Match, Hinge and more.

• The company has consistently invested $125 million annually in new, innovative technology and in continuing to build its Trust and Safety teams that aim to help make dating safer for everyone.

In other words: Match Group is committed to leveraging technology and building practices that make dating safer for everyone.

The company works to prevent and disrupt potential harm by utilizing a broad set of industry-leading AI and manual moderation and review tools that help:

• Automatically scan profiles for red-flag language and images.
• Review suspicious profiles, activity and user-generated reports.
• Regularly scan for fraudulent accounts or suspicious messaging activity.

Plus, plus, plus: Match Group offers a wide range of safety features across its platforms. Some of these include:

• Photo Verification

This tool helps confirm that users are the person in their profile by comparing profile photos with a series of pose photos taken in-app.

Here's why: Verified profiles often receive better engagement, as these profiles encourage more informed decisions on dating apps and increase confidence in a potential match.

• Anti-Harassment Prompts

The "Are You Sure?" (AYS?) feature serves as a real-time warning to think twice about sending a message.

How it's done: The tool uses AI to detect harmful language and proactively intervenes to warn the sender that their message may be offensive.

• AYS? was built based on language members have reported in the past and has continued to evolve and assimilate behavior over time to flag new words and phrases.
• By leveraging AI tools that proactively detect language that could be harmful or is deemed harassment, there is an opportunity to educate users in real-time, which can help inform their choices and decisions before a message is sent on the app.

The impact: Since the feature was introduced in 2021, more than 500 million messages have been either edited or deleted by users after the feature flagged potentially harassing or problematic language.

Over time, there has been an 84% decrease in the feature being triggered to users on Plenty of Fish, indicating the tool is effectively guiding users to learn from the intervention prompts and change their behavior.

• Safety Center

The Safety Center was developed in collaboration with the Match Group Advisory Council and additional NGO partners to help protect and educate members so they can make more informed decisions on the apps.

The deets: This interactive section in the app includes local resources, articles, tips, quizzes, and information about safety and privacy features.

• Share My Date feature

Soon, on Tinder and Plenty of Fish, users will be able to easily share information about their dates — such as location, date, time and certain profile information — directly from the app.

The idea: This feature allows friends and loved ones to follow along users' dating journeys.

• Long Press Reporting

This feature lets users tap and hold offensive messages, which launches the ability to report them right in the chat.

The result: This simplifies the reporting process and makes it easier for individuals to report bad actors.

• Customer Care Teams

Match Group's brands have robust customer care teams dedicated to supporting its users and addressing any complaints or reports of bad behavior.

What to expect: Serious violations of the company's Terms & Conditions are reported to Match Group's centralized safety repository and cross-referenced across its various brands to block associated accounts on other platforms.

• In these circumstances, once an account known to be associated with a bad actor is banned, that account is banned across all Match Group platforms, an advantage Match Group has as a portfolio company.

Match Group believes it has an important role to play in defining the standards for all players in the industry.

The takeaway: Match Group is committed to helping everyone date safer and is focused on ways to move the industry forward with new safety features and tools across its platforms around the world.

Learn more.