To: In 2019, my friends and I decided to go on dating websites and say just to “play around”
Me: Looks like you got caught up when someone started to play around with your feelings, rather than the other way around, as you had intended.
You have not said if you are male or female, but I would guess you are female and you live in India as many do who post here.
Dating sites are where the most vulnerable and the most wicked come to try and meet someone or destroy someone, because they can, by playing around and not giving a s*** what the person who they bait feels, or the hurt they inflict, just as you have discovered for yourself.
If you live in India, you have cultural, religious and caste vales to take into account and what your parents might think, if you choose unwisely, or if they intend for you to have a husband they chose for you.
You should keep your feelings to yourself and see what your parents have in mind for you, before you develop feelings for a man, whose feelings for you are circumspect to say the least and somebody who you have never met, so he could be your father, for all you know, or another older man, getting his rocks off from your innocence.
In any dating site, get a video connection with them and see them talking to you face to face, otherwise he has something to hide and you don’t know what that is and by the same token, one look at his face, might put you off him forever.