For Annie Rogers and Josh Anderson, love is more than just a game for two; it’s a game for their combined 3,000 followers. The newly engaged couple has turned their romance into one for the ages, or the new ages, so to speak, by going completely online.

This new world of social media dating is quickly becoming the norm in American culture as more people are going online to look for and share their relationships. According to Pew Research Center, today approximately 69 percent of the public uses some type of social media, compared to 5 percent in 2005.

With more people taking to smart devices, our daily interactions are beginning to blur the line between reality and something much greater. The traditional ways of communication are shifting, as our daily lives have suddenly become replaced by a series of algorithms.

“In a way, it was like a math problem. You put everything in right and you hope for the best. The best was her,” said Anderson as he sat next to his smiling fiancée under the bright lights of their shared studio apartment. He clutched her hand, gazing at the diamond ring he gave to her on their second anniversary.

Since they met in late 2014 on the dating app Tinder, the seemingly perfect duo have been inseparable ever since and have become one of the site’s leading success stories. For the millennial couple, it all started with a swipe right. For Tinder and other dating apps capitalizing on the $2 billion dollar industry of digital love, it all started with a formula.

Many web developers have turned the art of looking for love into a science. Behind the billion swipes Tinder generates per day, sits a boardroom full of recent college grads with tech, engineering, and mathematics degrees. Last year, the location-based dating application introduced a new algorithm that makes it easier for a profile to stand out by tracking a user’s swiping habits in order to optimize which images are shown first.

This means the app can ultimately predict what kind of profiles you would prefer to see, helping to increase your ELO score, a multiplier in the algorithm that measures the desirability of a “player”. While the idea may seem simple, Tinder CEO Sean Rad explained to Fast Company, “It’s very complicated. It took us two and a half months just to build the algorithm because a lot of factors go into it."

If it all seems like a game, that’s because it almost is. Jonathan Badeen, Tinder’s Vice President of Product, compared the rankings to a game of World of Warcraft.

"I used to play a long time ago, and whenever you play somebody with a really high score, you end up gaining more points than if you played someone with a lower score," he told Fast Company. "It’s a way of essentially matching people and ranking them more quickly and accurately based on who they are being matched up against."

In short, Tinder and its software engineers are doing simply that, engineering love. Through a series of complex rules, including the term they coined “swipe right rate” (try saying that five times fast), and the algorithm epsilon-greedy, brainchild of Machine Learning Lead, Mike Hall, the once small start-up turned Silicon Valley empire has figured out just how to help men and women find their fish in a sea of millions of users.

Tinder was not the first to discover the value of digital matchmaking. Many dating sites such as OkCupid, eHarmony, and Match.com use “match percentages,” a series of questions used to calculate compatibility. Through these answers, engineers and analytics teams can use a formula to provide a mathematical representation of potential happiness to a user.

Although the digital age has brought on-demand dating to the public, many find that it could be the end of traditional romance. Jodi Clarke, relationship coach and marriage counselor, said she is seeing more people turn towards online dating as their primary source for meeting people because it is more convenient in their busy lives. They often believe there will be less risk involved but quickly learn that is not the case.

“Social media is a curated world with people managing profiles and monitoring their likes and follows, taking pictures from just the right angle and posting what they want others to see,” said Clarke. “This trend in digital dating has made it easier for people to be more passive in the dating process, men and women.”

Dana Vince, certified couples therapist, said that those who rely on text and internet for interaction do not learn how to develop deep connections.

“What impact this will have later on remains to be seen,” said Vince. “I think many still crave the in-person presence of other human beings. Lack of meaningful connection can lead to isolation, which can create depression and anxiety issues.”

It could be argued that the very act of dating digitally is exactly that, an act. Over 49 million people in the U.S. have tried online dating, and as the number continues to rise, so does the risk. Tinder has come under fire for being a “hookup app” rather than what it was intended for, to build connections between mutually interested users. Other sites have followed suit, allowing an overflow of explicit, personal, and in many cases incorrect information to infiltrate its servers.

“I know a lot of people who use these sites for the wrong reasons. A lot of people take advantage of it. A lot of people put up fake versions of themselves in order to somehow get acceptance from people online,” said Rogers as she showed me a picture of her and Anderson on a recent trip to Nashville. “But this is real.”

The question remains, will social media be the end of dating as we know it? While many have expressed these fears, Dana Vince says otherwise. “We are wired for intimate connection and while it may stunt our ability to learn and know how to create those in person intimate relationships, humans won’t stop seeking them,” she said. “We are social beings wired for connection.”

Forbes estimates there are more than 2,500 online dating services in the United States, with 1,000 new sites opening every year. In today’s fast-paced world, more than 40 million Americans are skipping the local hotspots such as bars and parks to meet their significant other and looking toward computers to do the work for them.

“Yes, our relationship is different. We didn’t meet in the way our grandparents or parents met. I think we met more effectively,” said Anderson squeezing Annie’s hand. “We both work and found it easier to do it this way. Sometimes you get lucky and you make your catch.”