I think you make excellent points against the narrative that Gen Z has been uniquely poisoned against real-world interactions. I have a question what passed for "dating" in your own youth though. Why didn't you go out for meals, movies, parties, etc.? In my youth - a generation before - we did the hang out at each other's houses bit, but it was also expected that you would show up as a couple outside - go to dinner, movies, both; attend concerts; go to parties as a couple. Did that change, and if so, why? Just curious...
I would be curious to see how much "face time" young people experience compared to older generations. Even when young people go out now, much of that time is spent on their phones.
Vouching isn't going to help. Indeed, it may actively make the situation worse because the issue isn't the quality of the people but how incentives encourage them to behave.
When you meet someone in a social situation you often develop a crush on them before you go out. If you just evaluated them in a cold calculating light it is less likely they seem very appealing. Worse, most people are **very bad at identifying who they are compatible with** because they answer the question of who it would seem good to be attracted to not who they actually get on with.
This creates a strong pressure on both sides to look for the most physically attractive dates because that information comes across quickly and you don't need time to crush on them and build it up in your mind. But this makes the whole situation break down.
Women are pickier than men in who they sleep with but many still enjoy short term romantic relationships with sufficiently desirable guys. Because apps don't give the time to build the other kind of interest women reasonably choose to go out with the small fraction of guys who they will feel an immediate attraction to and since those guys get tons of options they are very unlikely to become serious with any particular date!
Add in some bad actors (I once went out with a girl who told me that, after I suggested we go dutch on a 3rd date, told me that if I wasn't mature enough to pay for everything I wasn't mature enough to date) and you get a bunch of cynical people who aren't even expecting to have a long term romantic relationship dominating the active participants (ie going on the most dates). Other people get bitter and stop trying.
The necessary solution is to do less app dating and to have more apps for social events which allow interest and friends to arise naturally.
As for the existence of the problem I submit that it would be astonishing if it didn't exist even in the absence of evidence.
Dating has always been scary and hard to do. But the existence of our phones and the internet have made staying in a lot less bad so of course it is going to reduce the amount of energy people invest in dating.
Long term it will eventually work itself out. Evolution is a very powerful force and in a generation or two most people will have parents who somehow made it work -- and whatever cultural or genetic factors made that happen will probably get passed along.
Not that sure we want to wait that long and I don't necessarily like the idea of everyone in 2 generations potentially being part of some high demand religious group so it would be great to fix it.
Looking at my friends over the years it seems like there’s a bifurcation among young men between those who confidently understand social cues, and those that don’t. Those that do are doing fine; those that don’t are largely checked out and aren’t really even looking for anything. No idea how representative this is, of the wider population but I think the very public messaging regarding the potential consequences of making a move over the past decade, real or perceived, has had something to do with it.
I don’t live in the US anymore, haven’t been on a date in over a year, and am not in a position to do so (have probably seen fewer than 25 women since my last leave in December, and not looking to get into anything now, I’ll be leaving enough behind if I get zeroed as it is) so despite my youth compared to the Slow Boring commentariat I don’t think I have much to say about specifics here. Just that it feels like there’s something weird happening in my generation and it’s not at all new to the last few years.
No take here, just an observation; I'm 43 married two kids so not applicable directly to me but through interactions I have in my rural community with the youth (Front desk workers at gym, early AM gym-goers, youth sport coaches, etc) the biggest issue I see is the cost of 'going-out'. My wife and I don't go out often because of the cost and if you're making minimum to just above minimum wage, how the hell do you take someone out? I personally see a lot of dating happen, it's just evolved because of the cost of inputs.
My wife and I met at work in 1991 and started dating in 1992. It looks like there was a downturn in couples who met at work during that period -- maybe because of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. The cultural shift against hanging out with co-workers, work-affiliated happy hours, and dating co-workers has its costs and benefits.
Thanks halina nice article and great that u are doing your part! Lot of healthy skepticism cast on the data about dating but no good chart about longitudinal dating data of young people improvised I suppose you are saying this is just something that needs to be more rigorously researched? When it is I guess you guy is telling you there isn’t as much of a dating drought as suspected but since u don’t have really good data yet it really could go either way?
This seems mostly right, but I think there's a deeper disconnect between generational assumptions.
If you're considering 22-25 'prime dating years,' this is true today, but also assumes as given that people aren't dating and forming relationships before that, when in the past most people would have been married by their mid-20s. That's basically not dating throughout what *used* to be the prime dating years,
You acknowledge that high schoolers largely don't (and really, let's be honest, logistically can't) 'go out on dates." But this means you reach early adulthood not having the relationship skill-building experiences past generations had already gotten out of the way. It also means past generations got to build those skills in a low-pressure environment where everyone was awkward, no one was thinking long-term, and most expected to leave their social community shortly and start over somewhere else. Dating in college and even more so after college carries higher stakes.
How much of this is an artifact of demographic change? The youth are increasingly from non-western backgrounds. Could be dating just isn't really a thing for many of these kids, but it's remained relatively the same amongst those from here.
I think the clearest indication that there indeed is a dating recession is the data around sex. Like, yes, most people date with the eventual intension to marry but marriage is a whole thing and refusing to take a drop in marriage rates as indication people are no longer dating feels correct.
OTOH - dating is often an emphemism for fucking. If you're not fucking, you're not dating. And there the data is pretty clear -
There was a bit of kerfuffle on the internet back in August surrounding a piece published with the title “Failure to Launch: Why Young People are Having Less Sex.” Using a survey of Californians aged 18-30, the percentage reporting no sexual partners in the prior year reached an all-time high of 38%.
Here’s an even more eye-raising statistic: in 2021, among that same age group, just 9% of women reported having at least 2 sexual partners. It was 12% of younger men. The widespread belief that these young adults are having a ton of casual sex is demonstrably false.
But, let me expand the scope of the inquiry even further. It's not just young people having less sex; this trend spans virtually all adult age groups. People are having less sex.
Yes, I thought it was a bit striking that this piece never mentioned sex at all. So much of what people suggest for dating just seems overly intellectual- "find someone that shares your interests, get your friends to match you with their friends," blah blah blah... it really doesn't have to be that complicated. Just find someone you're sexually attracted to, and do what comes naturally.
But of course that's a lot harder when everyone is trying (and failing) to meet online, and so much of what drives sexual attraction only works in person.
I've also noticed a weird sort of horseshoe effect. Women on the right don't want to have unmarried sex because it's a sin, women on the left don't want unmarried xex because it's patriarchal. There seems to be increasingly few women who go out actively looking for a sexual partner just for fun.
I generally find "Generational" (Boomer is this, Gen X is that) narratives utter tripe, usually mistaking a sub-demographic as a whole broad decade+ demographic
A great deal of App technology & architecture - dating, schooling - is proving I think to be Bad At What It's Supposed to Do. There I think probable commonalities in the specific fit of App dev ideas and these areas (both highly human social) verus other areas, worth some research I suppose.
My take is that freemium models are the problem. If everyone just paid a few bucks a month to be on these apps, they would actually have good incentive structures (which is why I pay for substack). But people love cheap stuff more than they love good stuff.
I think it is beyond Freemium - that's more a consumer facing app issue which is real certainly but one sees this in subscription as like edutec subscribed by institutions (not the parents). (I also see it in business apps which are more human behavioural focus and are not freeium...)
The issue I am fairly convinced is not incentives in simplest sense of who is paying, although certainly above all on consumer apps a real factor, but something much more structural in the App dev culture / mode of development (and perhaps some fundamentals that app mode of tool is not right for certain functions)
The freemium model influences the development culture. You take a ton of investment up front, do whatever it takes to hit scale, and pray you can make the money back later.
If companies grew slowly and sustainably, they would have more freedom to ask if they are achieving the goal they set out to achieve. For example, Feeld intentionally kept a lean team so they wouldn't be tempted to sell out and give in to bad incentives.
Hmm yes, i can see how the model may impact overall development culture although I think a significant portion of this is the overall pattern generated by seeking VC money model to try to be a "unicorn" which structurally means one has to try to hit often quite insane levels of uptake globally.
Although I don't do this anymore, I used to sit on a lot of Accelerator/Incubator selection committees and I was typically the lonely more infra-hard asset voice contra the quick flip asset-light VCs
kind of a tangent, but how many friends does the average young person have? this piece makes it sound like it's dozens and dozens? if so, that is great! crazy, but great.
The whole "why all the serial killers?" thing in interesting but can be a bit like arguments about fertility rates: everyone says the key to solving the problem is their preexisting views.
Meanwhile I really liked Derek Thompsons approach (remember The Green River Killer was hardly some anomaly compared to say Atlanta IYKYK) https://www.derekthompson.org/p/the-sunday-morning-post-whatever how it doesn't make anyone's mouth taste good...read it
McDuffie, the moderate DC mayoral candidate, is anti speed cameras. The moderate candidate for SF supervisor (see Noah Smith's post) wants to turn a park back into a road. Further evidence that the only way forward for urban governance is Mamdani/Raman style socialist YIMBYism.
I think you make excellent points against the narrative that Gen Z has been uniquely poisoned against real-world interactions. I have a question what passed for "dating" in your own youth though. Why didn't you go out for meals, movies, parties, etc.? In my youth - a generation before - we did the hang out at each other's houses bit, but it was also expected that you would show up as a couple outside - go to dinner, movies, both; attend concerts; go to parties as a couple. Did that change, and if so, why? Just curious...
I would be curious to see how much "face time" young people experience compared to older generations. Even when young people go out now, much of that time is spent on their phones.
Vouching isn't going to help. Indeed, it may actively make the situation worse because the issue isn't the quality of the people but how incentives encourage them to behave.
When you meet someone in a social situation you often develop a crush on them before you go out. If you just evaluated them in a cold calculating light it is less likely they seem very appealing. Worse, most people are **very bad at identifying who they are compatible with** because they answer the question of who it would seem good to be attracted to not who they actually get on with.
This creates a strong pressure on both sides to look for the most physically attractive dates because that information comes across quickly and you don't need time to crush on them and build it up in your mind. But this makes the whole situation break down.
Women are pickier than men in who they sleep with but many still enjoy short term romantic relationships with sufficiently desirable guys. Because apps don't give the time to build the other kind of interest women reasonably choose to go out with the small fraction of guys who they will feel an immediate attraction to and since those guys get tons of options they are very unlikely to become serious with any particular date!
Add in some bad actors (I once went out with a girl who told me that, after I suggested we go dutch on a 3rd date, told me that if I wasn't mature enough to pay for everything I wasn't mature enough to date) and you get a bunch of cynical people who aren't even expecting to have a long term romantic relationship dominating the active participants (ie going on the most dates). Other people get bitter and stop trying.
The necessary solution is to do less app dating and to have more apps for social events which allow interest and friends to arise naturally.
As for the existence of the problem I submit that it would be astonishing if it didn't exist even in the absence of evidence.
Dating has always been scary and hard to do. But the existence of our phones and the internet have made staying in a lot less bad so of course it is going to reduce the amount of energy people invest in dating.
Long term it will eventually work itself out. Evolution is a very powerful force and in a generation or two most people will have parents who somehow made it work -- and whatever cultural or genetic factors made that happen will probably get passed along.
Not that sure we want to wait that long and I don't necessarily like the idea of everyone in 2 generations potentially being part of some high demand religious group so it would be great to fix it.
Looking at my friends over the years it seems like there’s a bifurcation among young men between those who confidently understand social cues, and those that don’t. Those that do are doing fine; those that don’t are largely checked out and aren’t really even looking for anything. No idea how representative this is, of the wider population but I think the very public messaging regarding the potential consequences of making a move over the past decade, real or perceived, has had something to do with it.
I don’t live in the US anymore, haven’t been on a date in over a year, and am not in a position to do so (have probably seen fewer than 25 women since my last leave in December, and not looking to get into anything now, I’ll be leaving enough behind if I get zeroed as it is) so despite my youth compared to the Slow Boring commentariat I don’t think I have much to say about specifics here. Just that it feels like there’s something weird happening in my generation and it’s not at all new to the last few years.
No take here, just an observation; I'm 43 married two kids so not applicable directly to me but through interactions I have in my rural community with the youth (Front desk workers at gym, early AM gym-goers, youth sport coaches, etc) the biggest issue I see is the cost of 'going-out'. My wife and I don't go out often because of the cost and if you're making minimum to just above minimum wage, how the hell do you take someone out? I personally see a lot of dating happen, it's just evolved because of the cost of inputs.
My wife and I met at work in 1991 and started dating in 1992. It looks like there was a downturn in couples who met at work during that period -- maybe because of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. The cultural shift against hanging out with co-workers, work-affiliated happy hours, and dating co-workers has its costs and benefits.
Thanks halina nice article and great that u are doing your part! Lot of healthy skepticism cast on the data about dating but no good chart about longitudinal dating data of young people improvised I suppose you are saying this is just something that needs to be more rigorously researched? When it is I guess you guy is telling you there isn’t as much of a dating drought as suspected but since u don’t have really good data yet it really could go either way?
This seems mostly right, but I think there's a deeper disconnect between generational assumptions.
If you're considering 22-25 'prime dating years,' this is true today, but also assumes as given that people aren't dating and forming relationships before that, when in the past most people would have been married by their mid-20s. That's basically not dating throughout what *used* to be the prime dating years,
You acknowledge that high schoolers largely don't (and really, let's be honest, logistically can't) 'go out on dates." But this means you reach early adulthood not having the relationship skill-building experiences past generations had already gotten out of the way. It also means past generations got to build those skills in a low-pressure environment where everyone was awkward, no one was thinking long-term, and most expected to leave their social community shortly and start over somewhere else. Dating in college and even more so after college carries higher stakes.
I just have one question for the author. I have experience with this question as I have two non married daughters in their early 30s
How many of your "friends" want marriage and children?
How much of this is an artifact of demographic change? The youth are increasingly from non-western backgrounds. Could be dating just isn't really a thing for many of these kids, but it's remained relatively the same amongst those from here.
I think the clearest indication that there indeed is a dating recession is the data around sex. Like, yes, most people date with the eventual intension to marry but marriage is a whole thing and refusing to take a drop in marriage rates as indication people are no longer dating feels correct.
OTOH - dating is often an emphemism for fucking. If you're not fucking, you're not dating. And there the data is pretty clear -
https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/the-data-is-clear-people-are-having
There was a bit of kerfuffle on the internet back in August surrounding a piece published with the title “Failure to Launch: Why Young People are Having Less Sex.” Using a survey of Californians aged 18-30, the percentage reporting no sexual partners in the prior year reached an all-time high of 38%.
Here’s an even more eye-raising statistic: in 2021, among that same age group, just 9% of women reported having at least 2 sexual partners. It was 12% of younger men. The widespread belief that these young adults are having a ton of casual sex is demonstrably false.
But, let me expand the scope of the inquiry even further. It's not just young people having less sex; this trend spans virtually all adult age groups. People are having less sex.
Yes, I thought it was a bit striking that this piece never mentioned sex at all. So much of what people suggest for dating just seems overly intellectual- "find someone that shares your interests, get your friends to match you with their friends," blah blah blah... it really doesn't have to be that complicated. Just find someone you're sexually attracted to, and do what comes naturally.
But of course that's a lot harder when everyone is trying (and failing) to meet online, and so much of what drives sexual attraction only works in person.
I've also noticed a weird sort of horseshoe effect. Women on the right don't want to have unmarried sex because it's a sin, women on the left don't want unmarried xex because it's patriarchal. There seems to be increasingly few women who go out actively looking for a sexual partner just for fun.
Very good article and critical reflection.
I generally find "Generational" (Boomer is this, Gen X is that) narratives utter tripe, usually mistaking a sub-demographic as a whole broad decade+ demographic
A great deal of App technology & architecture - dating, schooling - is proving I think to be Bad At What It's Supposed to Do. There I think probable commonalities in the specific fit of App dev ideas and these areas (both highly human social) verus other areas, worth some research I suppose.
My take is that freemium models are the problem. If everyone just paid a few bucks a month to be on these apps, they would actually have good incentive structures (which is why I pay for substack). But people love cheap stuff more than they love good stuff.
I think it is beyond Freemium - that's more a consumer facing app issue which is real certainly but one sees this in subscription as like edutec subscribed by institutions (not the parents). (I also see it in business apps which are more human behavioural focus and are not freeium...)
The issue I am fairly convinced is not incentives in simplest sense of who is paying, although certainly above all on consumer apps a real factor, but something much more structural in the App dev culture / mode of development (and perhaps some fundamentals that app mode of tool is not right for certain functions)
The freemium model influences the development culture. You take a ton of investment up front, do whatever it takes to hit scale, and pray you can make the money back later.
If companies grew slowly and sustainably, they would have more freedom to ask if they are achieving the goal they set out to achieve. For example, Feeld intentionally kept a lean team so they wouldn't be tempted to sell out and give in to bad incentives.
Hmm yes, i can see how the model may impact overall development culture although I think a significant portion of this is the overall pattern generated by seeking VC money model to try to be a "unicorn" which structurally means one has to try to hit often quite insane levels of uptake globally.
Although I don't do this anymore, I used to sit on a lot of Accelerator/Incubator selection committees and I was typically the lonely more infra-hard asset voice contra the quick flip asset-light VCs
kind of a tangent, but how many friends does the average young person have? this piece makes it sound like it's dozens and dozens? if so, that is great! crazy, but great.
The whole "why all the serial killers?" thing in interesting but can be a bit like arguments about fertility rates: everyone says the key to solving the problem is their preexisting views.
Meanwhile I really liked Derek Thompsons approach (remember The Green River Killer was hardly some anomaly compared to say Atlanta IYKYK) https://www.derekthompson.org/p/the-sunday-morning-post-whatever how it doesn't make anyone's mouth taste good...read it
McDuffie, the moderate DC mayoral candidate, is anti speed cameras. The moderate candidate for SF supervisor (see Noah Smith's post) wants to turn a park back into a road. Further evidence that the only way forward for urban governance is Mamdani/Raman style socialist YIMBYism.