Leia o texto e examine o gráfico para responder à questão. When Tinder (a mobile dating app) was launched on college campuses in America in 2012, it quickly became a hit. Although

Leia o texto e examine o gráfico para responder à questão.

When Tinder (a mobile dating app) was launched on college campuses in America in 2012, it quickly became a hit. Although online dating had been around since Match.com, a website for lonely hearts, launched in 1995, it had long struggled to shed¹ an image of desperation. But Tinder, by letting users sift through photos of countless potential dates with a simple swipe, made it easy and fun.

Soon Tinder and its rivals had transformed dating. A report found that 30% of American adults had used an online dating service,^B) including more than half of those aged between 18 and 29.^D) One in five couples of that age had met through such a service.^A) Usage surged during the pandemic, as lonely locked-down singles searched for partners. The market capitalisation of Bumble, a rival to Tinder, surged to $13 billion on its first day of trading² in February 2021. Later that year the value of Match Group, which owns Tinder, Hinge and scores of other dating services, reached nearly $50 billion.

Today roughly 350 million people around the world have a dating app on their phone, up from 250 million in 2018, according to a research firm. In June 2024 Tokyo’s government even said it would launch a matchmaking app^C) of its own to pair up singles in the city. Yet lately online dating has lost its spark.^E) The apps were downloaded 237 million times globally in 2023, down from 287 million in 2020. According to a research firm, the number of people who use them at least once a month has dwindled from 154 million in 2021 to 137 million in the second quarter of 2024.

(www.economist.com, 08.08.2024. Adaptado.)

¹ to shed: to get rid of something that is no longer wanted.

² trading: the activity of buying and selling things.

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