Bumble launches mental health and self-care badges

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and dating app Bumble is kicking it off with a new set of Interest Badges and Prompts about self-care and mental wellbeing.

Interest Badges on Bumble let you signal to other users what you care about, while Prompts let you show a little personality and can be good conversation starters. Six new Badges to choose from are "Therapy," "Mindfulness," "Deep chat," "Nutrition," "Sleeping well," and "Time offline." New Prompts include, "My mental health game changer was..." and "I'm prioritizing my mental health by..."

Mental health is important to millennials and Gen Z daters, especially since the pandemic. Since 2021, dating experts have said that self-care and mental healthcare and awareness is more important to singles than ever. A survey of 1,000 adults Bumble commissioned, conducted in April 2023, came to the same conclusion: Millennials and Gen Z are more likely than any other generation surveyed to go on a second date with someone who mentions therapy or their mental health journey on the first date.

Overall, 55 percent of respondents said it's important to be open about mental health when connecting with others. A majority, 60 percent, are comfortable talking about mental health on the first date, while 53 percent are comfortable talking about therapy. Having these conversations is one of the most important factors to take into account when searching for a romantic partner, according to respondents.

If "Time offline" is your Interest Badge of choice, you can pause your Bumble activity without losing any connections or chat with Snooze Mode; you can choose to hide your profile from potential matches for 24 hours, 72 hours, a week, or indefinitely. Bumble also has an Incognito Mode that allows you to only appear for people with whom you want to match.

"Over the past few years, people have prioritized their mental health and personal self-care journey more than ever before, and now we are prioritizing it within our relationships," said Bumble's sex and relationship expert, Shan Boodram, in a press release. "Putting our mental health first can only make us better partners and ultimately have a stronger, healthier relationship in the long run."

Update: The story has been updated from its original version to reflect which survey Bumble's findings came from.