I’ve never been much into dating apps. I tried it once—shortly, just enough—and it overwhelmed me. Too many faces, too many conversations started at the same time, too much feeling of choosing men as if they were menu options. I closed the app and thought maybe the problem was mine. For years, that feeling seemed to remain in the minority. The dominant narrative was different: if you weren’t in the apps, you were missing something. He matches as a gateway to an active, modern and socially validated sentimental life.
But something has begun to break in that story. And it is not their critics who say it, but the companies themselves that built the business of swipe. Today, dating platforms recognize that young people still want to love, but they feel less and less capable of starting a relationship. Not because of a lack of desire, but because the process has become emotionally burdensome, socially exposed, and psychologically demanding. In the midst of a hyperconnected generation, the result is not more love, but more loneliness.
According to a report Elaborated by Match Group with Harris Poll and The Kinsey Institute, 80% of Generation Z believe they will find true love one day, more than any other generation. However, only 55% feel ready for a relationship right now. This distance between desire and action is what the company has called the readiness paradoxor “paradox of readiness.”
Contradiction is key to understanding the current moment. Young people want relationships, but they don’t know when—or how—to start them. The same report notes that almost half of Generation Z say they are not ready for a relationship right now and that 75% are in no rush to get into one. As I explained to Fortune Chine Mmegwa, head of strategy at Match Group, the process becomes a cycle that feeds on itself: very high standards of emotional preparation lead to waiting; waiting, loneliness; loneliness, to the desire for connection; the desire, the fear of not being ready. The result is not detachment, but paralysis.
Hyperconnected loneliness
This paralysis does not occur in a vacuum. It occurs in a context where youth loneliness has skyrocketed, even among people with an active social life and constant presence on networks. a study published in PLOS One defines this phenomenon as a “social ambivalence”: young people surrounded by people who, even so, feel deeply alone.
In Spain, data from the State Observatory of Unwanted Loneliness show that Almost seven out of ten young people admit to having felt lonely recently, regardless of the number of friends or followers they have. The amount of interaction does not compensate for the lack of emotional depth. Have likes It is not equivalent to feeling accompanied.
The Match Group Report confirms this feeling where more than 50% of Generation Z say they feel lonely despite having online connections. And, unlike previous generations, many admit that they seek connections not so much for love as to avoid loneliness, something that later generates guilt or the feeling of entering a relationship “for the wrong reason.”
The fear is not of the appointment, it is of public failure
Added to this emotional fragility is a decisive factor: social networks have changed the very way of starting a relationship. An appointment is no longer requested. Instagram is requested. And many times, everything stays there. Follow each other, watch stories, react with an emoji, observe for weeks—or months—without taking a clear step. A permanent phase of trial and error that reduces risk, but also blocks progress.
When a relationship seems to be moving forward, the pressure doesn’t go away; moves to the public showcase. According to data collected by Fortune From Match Group reporting, nearly half of Gen Z’s relationships begin with a soft launch on Instagram —an ambiguous photo, a story without context— compared to 27% of the population as a whole. He hard launchon the other hand, is perceived as a serious commitment by 81% of those who have done it.
Making a relationship official is no longer just another phase, it is experienced as a symbolic contract. Fear of public failurehaving to delete photosmanaging explanations, exposing oneself to judgment—works as a brake before even starting. Better not to start anything than to have to undo it in front of everyone. Match Group describe this climate as a real “performance pressure” applied to one’s love life. This retreat is not exclusive to dating. As we already analyzed in XatakaGeneration Z is consciously reducing their public exposure on social media: fewer posts, more private messages; Less footprint, less risk.
This climate is reinforced by a change in the ways of dating. How to collect Business Insidertraditional flirting is on the decline: asking for a profile has replaced asking for a coffee. Dating apps and the pandemic have weakened the “muscle” of talking to strangers in person, creating more social anxiety. The result is not rejection of contact, but rather a passive, prolonged and unresolving approach.
Some experts clarify, however, that it is not so much a loss of skills as a code change. Generation Z is more direct with its boundaries and expectations, and less tolerant of prolonged ambiguity. The indefinite is tiring. The confusing is exhausting.
That fits with report data Year in Swipe 2025 of Tinder, where there is a growing rejection of “minimum effort” and ambiguous signals. Trends like clear-coding or the loud looking —explicitly saying what you are looking for and from where—reflect that desire for emotional clarity in an ecosystem that, paradoxically, pushes us to say nothing and wait.
Apps adapt: less pressure, more context
Faced with this scenario, dating applications have decided to change their approach. They no longer sell the promise of hooking up quickly, but rather on reducing the anxiety of the first contact.
Tinder, owned by Match Group, has been the most explicit in this turn. Last year he launched Modesa system that allows you to choose how and from where to meet people: classic mode, Double Date (dates as a couple with a friend) and College Modewhich limits contacts to students from the same university environment,
The goal is to lower the psychological pressure of the one-on-one meeting. According to data from the company itselfusers of Double Date They send about 25% more messages per match and a relevant part are people who had abandoned the app and have decided to return.
As Cleo Long explaineddirector of product marketing at Tinder, the idea is to “give users control over what they are looking for at all times” and facilitate connections that don’t have to immediately turn into romantic dates.
However, not everyone believes that this redesign is enough. Ilana Dunn, former and current Hinge content manager dating coach, warned in Fortune that as long as apps don’t really push people to meet in person, their ability to reverse the trend is limited.
It is no coincidence that, in parallel, face-to-face meetings are growing: speed datingsingles events, organized parties or even “classes to learn how to meet people.” The desire to return to face-to-face is there, but it needs structures that make it less intimidating.
What no app can fix
Reducing this emotional crisis to a design problem would be misleading. There are structural factors that no app can solve.
The first is economical. As those responsible for Coffee Meets Bagel pointed out to Business Insiderfor many young people choosing a partner has become a deeply pragmatic decision. With housing skyrocketing and emancipation delayed, finding someone financially and professionally stable is almost a necessity. “Today you need two incomes to aspire to a minimally stable life,” they explained.
In parallel, some young people, especially in highly demanding environments such as Silicon Valley, prioritize work above any emotional bond. The so-called “conscious celibacy” does not respond to a lack of desire, but to a logic of extreme productivity. Relationships are perceived as a distraction or an uncertain investment.
Added to this scenario is uneven emotional exhaustion. Among many heterosexual women a feeling of tiredness accumulates that is not born from the rejection of love, but from the repetition of dynamics that have little resolution: conversations that continue without coming to fruition, ties that remain in permanent ambiguity and relationships that advance only as far as they are comfortable for one of the parties.
Managing diffuse expectations, interpreting contradictory signals or supporting the weight of “what we are” ends up becoming a continuous effort that many choose to reduce or pause. The result is not detachment, but accumulated emotional fatigue in an ecosystem that penalizes clarity and normalizes uncertainty.
The bottom of the matter
Generation Z is not cynical or incapable of love. She is, perhaps, the first who has internalized that loving badly has a high and visible emotional cost, and that making mistakes no longer happens in private.
Dating apps have understood the symptom and try to soften it by offering low-risk environments. But what they can’t offer—because no technology can—is the learning that only comes from exposure.
In the end, maybe it wasn’t that I was too classic or out of time. Maybe what overwhelmed me that time was not the application, but the feeling that to start something you had to know too much, be too prepared, have everything clear before even meeting someone.
Because no one was ever fully prepared to meet someone.
And perhaps the real problem is not that young people don’t want to flirt, but that we live in a society that has turned love into a permanent test. And that, for fear of failing, he has stopped showing up.
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