For Balkan Women – Does Online Internet Dating Bring Genuine Risk?

February 19, 2026
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A substantial proportion of Serbian women who seek companions on the internet endure ‘unpleasant’ experiences offline, from harassment to dislike speech, tracking to sexual abuse. And extremely few really feel able to seek aid.

She met him on Badoo, a prominent dating application. However instead of a guy, she got a stalker – practically a month of non-stop phone calls, texts, and physical harassment.

‘He waited for me in the corridor of the building where I live,’ the woman wrote in response to a BIRN questionnaire on the experiences of females with online dating. ‘He stated he loved me after four days; got me by my neck when I claimed I didn’t want anything with him.’

The female’s account is among greater than 100 submitted by women in Serbia as part of a BIRN investigation into the dark side of on-line dating. And her story is much from uncommon.

A quarter of respondents reported stalking, harassing or unwanted sexual advances; two-thirds reported some kind of unpleasant experience; and the huge majority were reluctant to share what happened to them with any individual else, let alone report the cases to the cops. Nearly fifty percent stated they really felt insufficiently shielded when making use of dating apps.

Serbia is no exemption: ladies generally are practically twice as most likely as guys to have an adverse experience on dating websites and applications.

In the USA, three out of 5 ladies will certainly have some type of unpleasant experience when online dating.

In spite of such numbers, the likes of Tinder and Badoo are under no responsibility to expose data on the price of problems or what activity they have taken in such cases; women proclaim to have little or no trust in those in authority tasked with helping them.

The main findings of BIRN’s examination are:

  • Tinder and Badoo are one of the most popular dating systems among those that reacted to the survey, as well as social media Instagram, Facebook and Twitter
  • Two in three females reported some sort of unpleasant experience
  • 2 in 5 females experienced acting – i.e. that the other individual acted to be someone else – and one in 4 claimed they had been the target of hate speech
  • One in 4 women who took place to fulfill their online dates offline experienced stalking, harassing or unwanted sexual advances, ranging from compelled kissing to forced sexual relations
  • 9 in ten women claimed they would certainly not tell anyone what took place to them
  • Nearly half of ladies [44 percent] do not feel adequately safeguarded and safe while dating online
  • Social dating platforms are under no commitment to show to the public how many customers reported safety and security violations or misuse, nor what action the companies took.

Asked why they had not reported such incidents, one lady responded: ‘Embarassment’. One more responded, ‘I was shamed.More Here https://www.pplaymusic.us/ At our site I still am.’ A 3rd claimed, ‘I assumed I ‘d be mocked or misunderstood.’

A short-cut to enjoy?

The concept that an algorithm could help find the excellent companion is not a post-Y2K sensation.

The first modern-day dating site, Kiss.com, went on the internet in 1994, the year the Net was born. Today, globally, the most preferred online dating tool is Tinder, which by February in 2015 had hit 500 million advancing downloads.

Over the past 4 years, the appeal of this sort of dating has actually increased globally; we invest more and more time online, working, hanging out, shopping, and the COVID-19 pandemic just accelerated this shift. In 2020, the year the pandemic started, Tinder registered a record 3 billion swipes in a single day.

‘Online dating enables you to in some way reduce the path in the entire procedure of dating, so you can see what happens there and whether it deserves assigning more time to a particular individual or otherwise,’ said Selena Spica, a research study aide at the Institute for Sociological Research Study of the College of Belgrade and PhD prospect at the Laboratoire d’Etudes de Style et de Sexualitd in Paris.

One 32-year-old participant from a rural area of Serbia stated on-line dating was the only means she reached fulfill brand-new people. For some millennials, born in between 1981 and 1996, on the internet dating is the new standard. ‘Every little thing we do, we do online,’ claimed one. ‘So why not day online.’

‘It’s a great way to get to know a person before you see each other in person,’ claimed a 22-year-old participant. Yet does such ‘filtering’ always function?

Sufferer blaming

‘Hit and miss,’ is exactly how one woman explained on the internet dating in the BIRN questionnaire. Undoubtedly, some satisfied their existing companions on dating apps. For others, it’s an actual ‘miss out on.’

‘Not great, not horrible. No, scratch that. Terrible,’ said one 37-year-old woman.

An additional, 23 years of ages, met a guy over Instagram. From their on the internet chat he appeared ‘genuinely nice,’ she stated, so she consented to meet him face to face.

They satisfied in a public area, but that did not quit him from attempting to kiss her and compel himself on her. The woman claimed she tried to walk away but he followed her to her vehicle. She got behind the wheel and locked the door, yet the man began banging on the window and attempting to barge in.

Two-thirds of participants reported some kind of ‘unpleasant experience’. These variety from receiving unrequested explicit photographs and video clips or unwanted specific descriptions of sexual dreams, to blackmail, name-calling or dangers. Offline experiences can result in tracking, sexual assault and physical violence.

2 in five participants experienced impersonation, when the other person utilizes someone else’s name and/or photo and individual information; one in four experienced hate speech; one in five was threatened and/or blackmailed; 15 percent were sexually bugged online and when online dating went offline one in 4 ladies was harassed, tracked or sexually bothered, with sexual harassment varying from compelled kisses to forced sexual relations.

Spica stated that incidents of violence were depictive of ‘the Serbian reality’, one shaped by a machismo in which guys are viewed as beings of unchecked sexual desire and females as items at their disposal.

‘Depending upon the strength of the representation of macho, we will certainly have various situations – a forced kiss, unrequested photos and video clips, tried rape or some type of troubling comment,’ she informed BIRN. ‘It depends on exactly how deep the manly principle is rooted in the assumption of a particular man.’

For Balkan Women - Does Online Internet Dating Bring Genuine Risk?

Online dating, Spica stated, is seen as ‘a guy’s ball, because males are the ones who have naturally unrestrained sexual desire.’

So when a female experiences some sort of violent practices, culture asks, ‘what were you doing on that app? This isn’t your area; what did you expect? It’s except women, it’s not natural.’

Andrijana Radoicic Nedeljkovic, a program coordinator at the NGO Atina, which collaborates with targets of human trafficking and gender-based physical violence, stated that females who participate in on the internet dating are seen by some in culture as asking for trouble.

‘It’s since she really did not take sufficient treatment, she didn’t fulfill her companion in a conventional means, she had not been clever enough, with the idea that this would somehow avoid physical violence, which obviously is not true; responsibility for the violence lies only with the wrongdoer,’ stated Radoicic Nedeljkovic.

Tinder: information unavailable

Greater than a 3rd of women that took part in the BIRN survey claimed they make use of Tinder. Tinder, nevertheless, told BIRN it does not ‘have access’ to data on the number of women in Serbia utilize the application. It gave the very same response when inquired about worldwide data.

BIRN additionally asked Tinder the number of issues it had received from women customers and the number of ask for info from public establishments. ‘Regrettably, we do not have any additional data available,’ Tinder replied.

Filip Milosevic, producer at SHARE Foundation, which checks the digital community in Serbia, was skeptical. ‘Tinder likely has this data, yet is under no responsibility to release it,’ he claimed.

Besides Tinder, Meta’s socials media Facebook and Instagram are most popular when it pertains to on the internet dating. Though not mostly dating apps, 43 per cent of respondents said they use Facebook and Instagram to locate dates.

Both Tinder and Meta offer some security devices and attributes in cases of on-line dating physical violence or fraud.

Meta also has an International Lady’s Safety Hub consisting of ’12 nonprofit leaders, activists and academic professionals who have actually been consulted when creating new policies, products and programs’ to maintain women users risk-free, the firm informed BIRN.

Tinder, at the same time, has its very own dating safety standards and partnered with Garbo, a ‘female-founded, non-profit background check platform,’ to offer every Tinder participant using two complimentary background checks, yet only in the United States.

‘Tinder is absolutely mindful that impersonation is a huge issue, which is why it introduces confirmation devices,’ stated SHARE’s Milosevic. ‘The lack of openness concerning the stated data probably shows how huge the trouble really is.’

‘Report? To whom?’

Regardless of the frequency of abuse, 9 out of 10 females with such experiences said they had not considered telling any individual. Sixty-five percent of those who do choose to speak confide only in their good friends.

‘Every person mostly presumes online dating applications are utilized just for sex and with you claiming ‘Yes’ to a date, the man presumes you claimed ‘Yes’ to sex,’ said a 40-year-old female.

Data from BIRN’s study supports this: over 40 per cent of participants reported experiencing some kind of bullying practices with sexual undertones, either online or throughout offline experiences.

‘If you are a woman on such a platform, it means that you came for that [rape and sexual physical violence], and even if you consent to go out with them, you’re a slut 100 percent,’ said a 21-year-old, describing the sort of prejudice bordering online dating.

‘As soon as you go online, they look at you as a product. Still, if they satisfied ‘the very same you’ at a buddy’s college graduation party, they might fall in love for life.’

Such bias dissuade females from reporting abuse, said Spica.

‘It shapes a circumstance in which the target can not talk about it if she intends to and when she wants to, and without stricture from culture, since the system of shielding victims from violence merely does not operate in our country.’

Theoretically, Serbia has a lawful structure in place to take care of such abuse, even without acknowledging online dating as an unique classification. Yet in reality, couple of perpetrators are ever punished.

The context in which get in touch with was made, in this instance, via an on-line dating app, can not be an excuse for ‘not initiating procedures for criminal acts of Scams, Domestic Physical Violence, Sexual Harassment, Stalking or any other act that occurred by doing this,’ the Autonomous Female’s Centre told BIRN.

Yet victims are not mosting likely to the police.

‘In truth, if a woman goes to the authorities and states that she was tricked or that she was misled or that she experienced some form of violence that drops under some offense, or that her information was taken care of without her permission, the chance that she will really obtain appropriate assistance which the perpetrator will actually be prosecuted is really tiny,’ claimed Radoicic Nedeljkovic.

The Serbian indoor ministry told BIRN that, between 2017 and 2021, it had not asked for any type of information worrying gender-based violence issues to any specialised websites or online dating apps.

The ministry did not comment on the criticism levelled by BIRN’s participants concerning the absence of institutional support for sufferers of abuse.