Exactly how much time to spend on dating apps, according to a scientist who helps design them

Courtesy of Bumble

Hint: It's not two hours a day. Dr. Jess Carbino, pictured, is the in-house sociologist at dating app Bumble.

• After working at Tinder and now at Bumble, Dr. Jess Carbino has seen people overusing dating apps.
• Carbino said you generally shouldn't spend more than 30 minutes a day online dating, especially if you're not messaging anyone.
• Yet a Badoo survey found their users spend on average 90 minutes a day on dating apps.

I've never used a dating app - and maybe that's a good thing.

I tried online dating back in 2012, before apps were really popular, and I was absolutely addicted. As soon as I got out of work, I'd run home, log on, and scroll through a seemingly endless pool of men who might just be my next date, hookup, or husband (spoiler alert: didn't find the husband on there).

One time, some family came over and I let them talk amongst themselves while I took care of an "important work thing," i.e. chatting with some guy on OKCupid who said he had dogs.

So when I spoke recently with Dr. Jess Carbino, Bumble's in-house sociologist (she previously worked at Tinder), I asked her, for a friend: How much time should you really be spending online dating?

"There has to be a boundary associated with how anyone spends their time," Carbino said. Uh-oh.

Thirty minutes a day is sufficient, she said: 15 in the morning and 15 at night. Especially once the novelty and excitement wear off, which tends to happen a month in, you shouldn't be spending more than an hour a day on dating apps.

Carbino did caveat that if you're really active on dating apps and messaging with multiple people at once, 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening might be fine. The point is not to spend hours every day swiping through one profile after another without actually communicating with anyone.

Yet according to a survey by dating app Badoo, its users spend on average 90 minutes a day online dating, logging on 10 times a day for about nine minutes at a time.

"People are busy, and they need to think about dating as a part of their life, as a component of their life," Carbino said. "It shouldn't feel like a job. Dating should feel like something that you're doing in order to meet somebody."

A more effective way to use those hours (and hours) instead of swiping? Carbino said: "It would be better if you were spending a couple hours a week on a date, or two dates, or three dates, and trying to get to know people that you've matched with."