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Romance isn't dead. Quite the contrary, in fact.

Tinder has released data showing a dramatic rise in mentions of the words "courting" and "flirting" in dating app bios, spelling a return to good old fashioned wooing. It certainly beats "DTF?"

According to Tinder, "courting" has been included in 81 percent more Tinder bios this year, compared to February 2020. Interestingly, that data pertains to users aged between 18 and 25, meaning Gen Z daters seem to be showing an interest in more traditional forms of romancing. The dating app thinks that the popularity of period dramas like Netflix's Bridgertonare the reason for this.

But that's not the only word that's getting a lot of action on the app. The term "flirting" has also seen a massive increase in 2021, with 132 percent more mentions in bios than the previous year.

This isn't the first we've heard of old-school courtship's return to dating culture. At the height of England's sex ban last summer, one dater told me about her courtship-style relationship: "I felt like I was in the Victorian day, getting courted and going for walk around a park." At the very outset of the pandemic, single people quickly shifted towards pen-pal style romancing. Mashable's Morgan Sung recently wrote about the fact that dating in a pandemic feels like being in a character in a period drama. "In the midst of this pandemic, talking to potential love interests for weeks on end without meeting, let alone hooking up, has felt very much like a drawn-out Victorian courtship," wrote Sung.

Even Phoebe Dynevor, who plays Daphne Bridgerton in the Netflix show, has spoken about this topic, comparing courtship in Regency era England to now, in a general sense. "I think the problem today is there is no social etiquette, you can ghost someone and just blank them completely and there's no repercussions to that," Dynevor told Conan O'Brien in an interview. "Also, if someone was into you in those days, they would come round and bring you a big bouquet of flowers, it was simple as that. You knew where you stood with people." 

There's no doubt that being single has presented its own challenge during the past year of this pandemic — whether it's a deep loneliness, a yearning for human touch, or (let's be real here) an intense horniness due to government-imposed sex bans. Dating has changed dramatically too in this period, with many opting for virtual dating, which has brought with it Zoom-dating fatigue, and virtual dating fomo. And, of course, some people have been falling in love at high speed during the pandemic, getting themselves into "turbo relationships".

None of us has a crystal ball for how this next year will pan out. Dating app OkCupid thinks Aug. 1 will be the hottest dating day of the year, after the UK government published its roadmap out of lockdown, which set a new goal of July 31 for giving all UK adults their first vaccine dose.

Some of us won't be too sorry to bid farewell to virtual dating when the time comes.

The romance and courtship, however, has my full blessing to remain a permanent feature in our dating culture.

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