{"id":626901,"date":"2026-04-24T01:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T01:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/626901\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T01:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T01:46:10","slug":"can-app-design-make-us-better-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/626901\/","title":{"rendered":"Can App Design Make Us Better People?"},"content":{"rendered":"

You matched with Adam.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey cutie, how are you?\u202fxx\u201d\u202f
\u201cDo you want to go on a date?\u201d\u202f
\u201cHello\u2026 are you still there\u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ahh\u2026yes. The graveyard of \u2018you up\u2019 messages and the death of a thousand possible forever afters.\u202fIf this trail of messages is familiar to you, firstly,\u202fI\u2019m\u202fsorry. Secondly,\u202fI\u2019m\u202fsorry. And\u202fshout out to anyone\u202fI\u2019ve\u202fghosted or anyone\u202fwho\u2019s\u202fghosted me, if\u202fyou\u2019re\u202fcurrently reading this,\u202fhello.<\/p>\n

There are few places\u202fthat\u202fbetter\u202fcapture\u202fthe slow death of modern manners than a dating app inbox.\u202fAnd romance may be the clearest example, but it is hardly the only one. Across digital life, we have become strangely comfortable with a kind of ambient discourtesy: cancelling plans, ignoring messages, treating other people\u2019s time as flexible, and confusing convenience with freedom.\u202fOf course,\u202fthe internet did not invent bad manners, it just made it 10 times easier to disregard the basic niceties\u202fwe once loved.<\/p>\n

The Systems That Taught Us Bad Habits<\/p>\n

For years, digital platforms were built around ease,\u202fabundance\u202fand endless possibility.\u202fMore matches. More likes. More tabs.\u202fThe user was\u202fqueen, and every system was designed to maximise choice and minimise effort.<\/p>\n

Somewhere along the way, digital experiences also made it easier to be\u202fcareless\u202ftowards\u202feach other.\u202fAnd we took it as permission to be so.<\/p>\n

Dating apps\u202fmake\u202fit\u202fincredibly easy to express interest and just as easy to abandon it.\u202fUnsurprisingly,\u202fwe\u2019re\u202fexhausted by the chase:\u202f\u202f78% of Gen Z<\/a>\u202fare\u202fexperiencing dating app burn out.<\/p>\n

We once idealised\u202fnonchalance,\u202fme included, and\u202fromanticised people\u202fwho gave us absolutely nothing. Now there is a growing appetite for effort, clarity and people who behave\u202fas if there is\u202factually a\u202fhuman\u202fon the\u202freceiving\u202fline of\u202ftheir behaviour.<\/p>\n

Even Jacob Elordi, in his post-Wuthering Heights\u202fera, said he wants \u201cthe art of shame\u201d to come back in style.\u202fSo\u202feven\u202fHeathcliff is\u202fwingmaning\u202fus\u202ftoward\u202fmore\u202fself-awareness and a little more old-fashioned consideration.\u202fA\u202freminder\u202fthat\u202ffull frontal honesty is deeply attractive.<\/p>\n

What 2026 Edges Exposed \u2013 Modern Civility<\/p>\n

There is an end in sight. This year\u2019s Edges Report from Omnicom\u2019s\u202fcultural intelligence unit, Backslash points to a shift\u202fback to modern civility.<\/p>\n

Whilst\u202fwe\u2019ve\u202fdissolved many\u202fnorms that once constrained us,\u202fwe\u2019ve\u202falso shed some of our good manners in the process. In the pursuit of the \u2018self\u2019,\u202fdigital life has led us to normalise a lack of chivalry, which once made us swoon.<\/p>\n

Gen Z and Millennials are positioning themselves as the protagonist of their own story. Whilst this gives permission to be authentically oneself, it also cultivated a self-centric lens of life, often overlooking others because\u202fwe\u2019re\u202ftoo busy wondering what character\u202fwe\u2019ll\u202fbe next.<\/p>\n

No surprise then, we treat the \u2018liked\u2019 section on dating apps like Tamagotchis, ignoring their needs (and inavertedly our own), to die, a\u202fslow, starved death.<\/p>\n

What Hinge Understood<\/p>\n

Through my own\u202fstrictly professional research, I noticed Hinge had\u202fintroduced a conversation limit \u2013 forcing me to only have\u202feight\u202fpeople\u202fwaiting on my reply at a time.<\/p>\n

This\u202f\u2018Your Turn Limit\u2019 prevents you from sending new likes until\u202fyou\u2019ve\u202freplied to the ones\u202fyou already have.\u202fIt keeps users accountable in a space where manners easily slip.\u202fAfter\u202fall\u2026you\u202fwouldn\u2019t\u202fwait 15 hours to reply to someone in a real-life conversation\u2026You\u2019d hope.<\/p>\n

This\u202fsmall design choice\u202fhas\u202freportedly increased\u202fresponse rates on Hinge by 20 per cent<\/a>. Moves from brands like this are helping\u202fhold up a mirror to our shortcomings\u202fin self-interest and are giving us a nudge toward a kinder, more polite way of life.<\/p>\n

This\u202fdoesn\u2019t\u202fmean app design can make us morally better. But it can make being better easier\u202fby rewarding\u202ffollow-through instead of flakiness.<\/p>\n

Better Behaviour Is A Design Choice<\/p>\n

Enough about my single chronicles.\u202fLet\u2019s\u202ftalk design.\u202fBecause Hinge is not really fixing romance, if it did, I\u202fwouldn\u2019t\u202fstill be on there.\u202fBut\u202fit is correcting a behaviour digital culture helped normalise -\u202fendless choice\u202fand\u202fthe ability to treat people as infinitely\u202fswipeable.<\/p>\n

For years, brands have been obsessed with removing every\u202fpossible obstacle. Making things Faster. Easier.\u202fSmoother. But not every barrier is a bad one. Sometimes a little structure is exactly what stops\u202fus\u202ffrom tipping into carelessness\u202f\u2013\u202fsomething\u202fthe\u202fEdges report calls\u202f\u2018digital friction\u2019.<\/p>\n

People\u202fdon\u2019t\u202fnecessarily want limitless freedom from one another. Often, they want better ways of being with\u202feach other. More\u202fsweat. More\u202feffort. More courtesy.<\/p>\n

For marketers and product designers, the opportunity is not to blame people. It is to guide them. To design experiences that do not just optimise for personal ease but also make space for mutual respect.<\/p>\n

The most resonant brands in the next era\u202fwill be the ones that understand when to challenge their users and enforce useful barriers.<\/p>\n

In a world of AI shortcuts, synthetic smoothness and\u202fhalf-hearted\u202finteractions, consideration starts to look a lot like\u202four missing\u202fhumanness.\u202fSo,\u202fthe real question is: can design choices make good manners feel natural?<\/p>\n

This may sound small\u202fbut\u202fit\u2019s\u202fhow\u202fnorms change, one swipe at a time.<\/p>\n

The want for \u201cProof\u202fof\u202fHuman\u201d is rising. Modern Civility is just one sign.<\/p>\n

Lillian Busby is a junior strategist at TBWA\\Melbourne.<\/p>\n

Join more than 30,000 advertising industry experts<\/p>\n

Get all the latest advertising and media news direct to your inbox from B&T.<\/p>\n

\t\tSubscribe\n\t <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You matched with Adam. \u201cHey cutie, how are you?\u202fxx\u201d\u202f \u201cDo you want to go on a date?\u201d\u202f \u201cHello\u2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,63215,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-626901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-tbwa","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}