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Tinder Helps Raise Awareness For Organ Donation

By Thomas Kuegler
Published on: 01:41 PST, Dec 15, 2015

Tinder just partnered with the NHS to raise awareness about organ donations, which is awesome. I thought the popular app had already slipped into oblivion because of the increasing number of fake profiles, but recent news suggests they are indeed thriving. BBC News reports that the app is designed to find you a good personality match, but for the next two weeks, it will also encourage users to become organ donors.

First, it’s really not that much about personality, and second, the NHS is doing this to attract more young people to join its campaign. For the first time in over 10 years, the amount of people donating organs after death actually dropped.

To help raise awareness, Tinder has enlisted the help of Olympic gold medalist Jade Jones MBE, along with Gemma Oaten and Jamie Lang, stars of the reality show Made in Chelsea.

Tinder’s head of European communications, Hermione Way, said, “Tinder users regularly make the decision to swipe left or right wondering whether someone may be the person they are looking for.”

“While those swiping decisions are important and could be the first step to a successful relationship, we hope that the NHS profiles featuring Jamie, Jade and Gemma will encourage people to make and act upon a different decision too – to sign up as an organ donor.”

There are about 7,000 people on the waiting list for an organ in the UK, and in the past decade, over 6,000 people have died while waiting for their operation.

How will the awareness actually be raised?

Tinder created profiles for the celebrities previously mentioned, and if users swipe right while viewing these profiles, they will receive a message saying, “If only it was that easy for those in need of a life-saving organ to find a match.”

Sally Johnson, director of Organ Donation and Transplantation at NHS Blood and Transplant, hit on their obstacle of citizens not taking that final step to complete the signup.

She said, “Educating and encouraging people to sign up for organ donation – that’s what our partnership with Tinder is all about.”

“While a third of the UK population have registered their intention to donate on the NHS Organ Donor Register, millions more support donation but haven’t taken the final step to sign up.”

Sally Johnson recently spoke to the Guardian and emphasized the need for increased conversation about the worrisome trend.

“We know there is a combination of reasons for the decreases,” she started, “but we cannot hope to save more lives unless U.K. citizens talk about organ donation with their families and agree to donate if ever they are asked.”

Tinder has used the creation of fake profiles to raise awareness before, using a profile based on the main character of the film Ex Machina.

Tinder has recently come out with a different spin on their app entitled Tinder Plus, which is a subscription-based service allowing users to “Super Like” a profile. They do this if they find a particularly attractive personality. It all makes sense.

This new service has raised revenue for Tinder significantly, landing them at number six on the iOS revenue list for August, reports Forbes.

Tinder has definitely made an impact on today’s culture, and it looks like they’re continuing to do that in a good way with this recent news.

Whether they can find new ways to monetize their app moving forward is another issue entirely, but they’re making a step in the direction of social decency here.

[Photo by Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images]

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