'Glee' 's Harry Shum Jr. Is Happily Married but Enjoys Playing on His Friends' Tinder

Harry Shum Jr. escaped the dating app revolution, but that doesn’t mean he can’t have innocent fun with Tinder.

“I met my wife during the time that people were meeting each other on Facebook, so I got a little taste of it,” the former Glee star tells PEOPLE of meeting Shelby Rabara, whom he wed last year. “But half my friends are on dating apps and every time I’m out to dinner with them they let me play on the app and I get to swipe left and right.”

Shum, 34, thinks the apps are fascinating but “put in the wrong hands, it can be a little devastating to someone’s self esteem” he says. “But it’s just another tool – it’s the same thing as going to a bar.”

Using his friends’ Tinder accounts was useful research when Shum signed on to star in Single by 30, which is about a guy and a girl who make a pact at 18 to marry each other if they are not married by the time they are 30.

“She uses it as a safety net to take chances and put herself out there but he is in love with her,” Shum says of his character, who meets back up with his high school crush just six months before their 30th birthdays.

“We have a whole episode dedicated to dating apps,” Shum says of the series, which PEOPLE has an exclusive sneak peek of above.

“There are so many ways to meet people today,” says Shum, who co-stars on his new series with social media stars Kina Grannis,
Eric Ochoa, Anna Akana, Hillary Matthews, and Manon Mathews. “I say, ‘Whatever works!’ ”

Single by 30 is produced by Wong Fu Productions and will premiere Aug. 24 on YouTube Red.