New research says they're like eating soup with a fork: completely and utterly useless.

At any second of any day, you could die. A tornado could suck up an alligator from a bog and drop it from the sky onto your head.

So, doesn't it make sense that you'd spend the precious moments you do have doing things that matter or make you happy?

Well, according to a new study from the Oxford Internet Institute, a terrible way to do that is to use dating apps.

Dating apps, the buzz-killing study found, are a huge, phenomenal waste of time that rarely help us land either a dick appointment or a significant other. Instead, we spend more time on dating apps getting carpal tunnel from all the swiping than we do getting carpal tunnel the cool way: finger-banging.

The study proved the pointlessness of it all by finding that the vast majority of these swipes are actually ignored. An even vaster majority of our painstakingly overthought opening lines go unanswered.

Sadly, 49 percent of messages on dating apps are single, unanswered messages, and of the 51 percent that did exchange a few messages back and forth, only 19 percent exchanged phone numbers. No word on how many of those exchanges turned into something tangible, but basically, you only have a 19 percent chance of maybe meeting someone in person. Narrow that down to -30 percent if you keep wearing that hat.

With those odds, it seems like you have a better chance of finding lust or love in the light of day where some high-powered Instagram filter hasn't obscured their true face or horribly vapid personality.

Also revealed: men swipe right on any and everyone, then filter through their matches later on. Women, on the other hand, scrutinize profiles, bios and photos to determine whether someone is worthy, then swipe right. Great news for men; if you matched with her, she actually wants to talk to you. Shit news for women; he wants to talk to you, and 32,000 other Christinas with dental hygiene day jobs and a pitbull mix.

Two words about all this: NO SHIT.

Nobody is on Tinder or Bumble or Bumder or Tindle to find true love; people are looking for self-validation and story-worthy sex they can use use for their standup comedy routines.

However, while you don't need to be a scientist to figure that out dating apps are the equivalent of eating soup with a fork, hark! There's a lesson in it all: it's not you.

“This is probably sad to some people, but reassuring to others who think there is something wrong with them because nobody is responding to their messages,” lead researcher Taha Yasseri said in an interview. “It’s not you, it’s just a general trend. For some reason, people do not take these sorts of conversations too seriously.”

You hear that, Tinder Kings N' Queens of America? Get off your phones; it's a waste of time. Fling yourself into the IRL dating pool instead; at least there, you don't have to look at anyone's "Look at me, I climbed a mountain!" profile pics.