To All The Matches I Swiped Before: Dating, Apps & the Loneliness Epidemic

Growing up in the early 2000s, hanging out aimlessly as teenage boys, whether with my cousins or friends, we usually had one mission: draw as many girls as possible. It’s particularly illuminating that the present we live in now is what I imagined when I turned 18 in 2007. For better and worse, life feels different now. Yes, there was a youthful arrogance in the belief that we could ‘chat to any gyal’ but that’s just it; we had to approach and talk. While we may not have possessed any decent chat or had anything to offer besides a good time, talking to girls was something we enjoyed doing.

Much of the media we consumed growing up taught us about the chase and the romance that followed. R&B and hip-hop videos shaped our understanding of this, and early grime songs such as Dizzee Rascal’s I Luv You and Kano’s Brown Eyes localised how young romance was portrayed.

Nowadays, cultural conditions make it less likely due to several factors: the internet, the COVID-19 hangover, social media, the lack of third spaces, the cost of living, and all the things that generally make life a little bleaker than it used to be. Understandably, there’s a natural proclivity to look back at the past with rose-tinted glasses. Still, the mood and sentiment around the general discourse in recent years have been pretty bleak.

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Which makes things difficult for my generation. As a young woman who turned 20 during one of the UK’s many lockdowns – I can’t remember which one – I’ve noticed a huge shift in dating behaviours amongst my generation, which could be summarised quite simply as: people are dating less. When I asked my single friend Josh (23, London) to describe the dating scene in London, three words sprang to his mind: “it’s the trenches”. Although said in jest, this description alludes to the general sense of apathy felt towards romance within my peer group; a kind of defeatist unenthusiasm that often results in people pulling back from the scene completely, believing they are better off in the reliable company of friends, rather than searching for a partner.

In some ways, this is not entirely bad. Reframing the emphasis away from romantic love and towards platonic love can be extremely rewarding. But, equally, a relationship at an early age can teach you a lot about life; it can show you parts of yourself you may not have otherwise known, and it can bring you to a better understanding of what you like, what you dislike and what you need. You might say, it is something of a rite of passage that many young people are not taking, with the percentage of 16-18-year-olds who have dated falling from around 85% in the 1980s to under 50% in the 2020s.

And that’s within an age group constantly surrounded by each other. What happens when you get a bit older, and meeting someone organically is far less likely? Interaction must be organised and, when it is, will probably set you back at least £20. Here we see a similar pattern, with 54% of 18-34-year-olds in the 2020s reporting not having had a “steady” partner – a statistic that differs drastically from 2004, when only 33% said the same.

So what’s going on? Does that mean men and women of my generation are less interested in finding love? It might seem that way, but I don’t think it’s as black and white as that. Many factors are at play, causing this decline in dating, some of which we will be unpacking.

A long read about modern dating and relationships isn’t unheard of. If you scour the internet, you’ll find headlines about how “modern dating is broken”, we have entered a “relationship recession”, and “Gen Z are tired of dating apps”. However, no matter where you look, whether on Twitter, Love Is Blind, Instagram, or TikTok, there is a wide gap between what men and women think. And one that appears to be widening with dating apps and internet trends impacting our daily lives and how we see the world.

For brevity, we’ve combined our respective ideas around dating, modern romance and the loneliness epidemic. It should be noted that both are cisgender and heterosexual, so we can only speak from a certain, limited perspective. But for now, that’ll have to do. Let’s get into it...

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A long read about modern dating and relationships written by a single, city-dwelling man isn’t unheard of. If you scour the internet, you’ll find that women of all ages are writing on the topic, with some men writing about dating here and there. However, no matter where you look, whether on Twitter, Love Is Blind, Instagram, or TikTok, there is a wide gap between men and women in dating and romance. And one that appears to be widening with dating apps and internet trends impacting our daily lives and how we see the world.

Written by Jesse Bernard & Meena Sears

Where Did It Go Wrong?

If you’ve read anything on dating online recently, the likelihood is that the sentiment swings between cynical and reluctantly hopeful. Millennials and younger Xers can cite classic rom-com films, from When Harry Met Sally to 100 Days of Summer, as shaping their ideas around dating and romance. Few iconic rom-coms have been released in the past decade, with shows such as Euphoria and Insecure representing modern dating standards and scenarios and reflecting on the messiness of life and everything in between.

Artists such as Future, The Weeknd, SZA, and Taylor Swift, just to name a few, are acclaimed for their introspective songwriting. What makes them all relatable is that they explore themes around modern romance. Romcoms may not be as popular, but contemporary pop is where audiences can find stories they can relate to.

Maybe that’s why people are unironically drawn to villains like Count Olaf in Nosferatu. We live in an age when people don’t think twice about sharing their fetishes and idiosyncrasies, especially when platforms like Feeld exist. In recent years, there have been fewer memorable rom-coms for younger millennials and Gen Z to sink their teeth into.

Some writers have attempted to modernise the rom-com, including dating apps and ghosting, but many of these modern films forget one major premise: audiences are meant to walk away feeling more hopeful than when they entered the cinema. A good rom-com makes you feel something, even longing. It’s important to understand that modern dating culture is often framed through a Western perspective.

It’s clear there’s a problem on both sides of the aisle; women believe that men are trash, while the Manosphere is currently indoctrinating young male minds. While the former is understandable given the patriarchal world we live in, there is an obvious disconnect between genders when examining heteronormative relationships. Earlier this year, a moving graphic detailing how US couples meet and stay together began circulating the internet, detailing how online dating has become the primary way for people to meet romantically. But is this way of meeting people sustainable in the future?

Despite dating apps ultimately having the goal of getting people to meet, it’s generally not good business to build an app that’s designed to be deleted. Will we reach a point where dating apps become less relevant as people seek more IRL interaction? When asked whether people are meeting less IRL, Danielle, a 34-year-old director from South London, says that the pandemic rewired how people approach dating, particularly for young people who came of age during lockdown. “I think it's been increasingly hard after lockdown to meet people IRL, we're still feeling the ramifications of this today, years later,” she says, “Dating apps have helped connect people just like social media has, and hopefully that means more people are meeting when they wouldn't have originally.”

The concept of sliding in the DMs suggests that Instagram has long been an unofficial user-created platform feature. The ability to message users you had no connection with was unlike other platforms, where following or being friends was required. This enabled people to shoot their shots with romantic interests, and for millennials, many would still prefer finding a partner on Instagram instead of dating apps. This has always felt like a more natural way of meeting potential partners digitally, as for the most part, there’s a mutual interest if both parties follow each other. However, this culture is slowly changing among Gen Z who rarely post and prefer apps such as Snapchat due to concerns around privacy, screenshots and revenge porn. In addition to this, the culture around online dating is very low-maintenance – sending roses or liking stories doesn’t invite a response and has warped the idea of flirting.

Men And Women Aren’t Even In The Same Galaxy Anymore, Let Alone The Same Solar System

In a healthy romantic setting, desire and expectation work in tandem, but in a toxic environment, they are constantly at odds with each other. Kathryn, a 32-year-old creative strategist from London, says she’s never used them since being in a long-term relationship and believes they weren’t cool when she was last single. However, as someone outside of it, Kathryn says, “Discourse on social media would have you believing that people have this unrealistic and unattainable expectation, but I don't believe this is how people are living their lives and relationships.” Much of this could be a symptom of being chronically online, particularly for a generation that grew up online during COVID-19.

The rise of the manosphere in the past decade has made it more glaring that many men simply don’t like women. Substack writer Catherine Shannon aptly draws on our favourite TV mob boss, Tony Soprano, his hotness and his love for women. Yes, he was a scumbag, and murderer and had deep parental issues but one thing viewers could agree with was that for the most part, he liked women and their company. She writes, “Tony might kill a guy and throw his body in the river, but he wouldn’t cold-shoulder you out of the conversation circle. You’ll notice he’s baseline attentive to almost all women in the show, whether they are an object of desire for him or not. For all of Tony’s faults with women—and there are plenty (he’s a real dog 97% of the time) he does genuinely like them.”

Compare Tony to Andrew Tate, and the former may as well be Saint Valentine himself. Shannon’s argument isn’t that Tony is a good guy but that his attentiveness sets him apart from the other male characters on the show - except maybe Uncle Junior. One of the most common complaints among women dating men is the lack of attentiveness, genuine interest and an inability to ask questions.

A decade of modern feminism, #MeToo and online dating discourse hasn’t been the cause of the manosphere and rise in red pill content, but the growth in popularity of the former feminist-based movements has encouraged those who already held, dated, bigoted views to further entrench themselves.

Gen Alpha, who will take so many social cues from previous generations, will be entering a dating world that is far more divisive now than when Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus was first published in 1992. It was revolutionary at a time when women were becoming far more openly expressive of their sexuality, but we’ve now reached a point where both genders don’t even want to understand what the other wants. We’ve created a culture where it’s just about our own needs and whether someone else can fulfil them, rather than finding a partner you’re most compatible with, who will also likely fulfil the aforementioned. Perhaps that’s why we also haven’t seen many universally loved rom-coms akin to When Harry Met Sally recently, because it’s difficult to generate drama around liking someone’s profile on a dating site. Instead, we have shows such as Love Island and Married At First Sight, which show us what we don’t want rather than what we desire.

Feeld published a report detailing that monogamy was the most preferred relationship type among Gen Z, while millennials were more likely to explore polyamory and other forms of non-monogamous relationships. There’s a general sentiment that Gen Z is far more prudish than millennials, which we’ve seen with the rise in tradwives and the 4B movement, but these trends ultimately have a conservative, evangelical tone to them that doesn’t promote body autonomy. This has led to the recent 4B movement in South Korea and other puritanist-based movements, where young women are abstaining from men and sex entirely. These haven’t just sprung up in silos but rather, they’re responses to draconian policies around abortion and bodily autonomy.

Women’s standards

While movements like 4B and #boysober are certainly extreme responses to dire social and political conditions for women, at a less extreme level, could this so-called "relationship recession” be the product of a general withdrawal from dating by women who are consistently disappointed by its results? Many argue that women are being more picky about who they choose to sleep with because they are setting higher standards for themselves.

Today, in the UK and many other countries, women outnumber men in undergraduate studies, and increasingly women are occupying higher-paid positions across industries, suggesting women don’t need to rely on men in the same way as they used to. They can be financially stable without them. There is now room for women to prioritise other needs in a relationship, like good communication, emotional supportiveness and emotional availability, or simply sharing similar values. Whereas before, women might have settled for someone who didn’t possess these qualities due to societal and economic pressure, now they have the freedom to be more picky.

When we look at the past with rose-tinted glasses and reminisce on the “good ole days” when couples met at bars and in school playgrounds, we miss out a huge part of the story. Part of the story that ends not so happily ever after. I only need to speak with my grandma to see this, as she chats candidly about infidelity, abuse, and absent fathers amongst her still-married friends. That’s not to say these are things of the past, but, generally, when they do happen nowadays, they tend to end in divorce and separation – bringing me to my next point.

When I look at my mother’s generation, there was much of this: divorce and separation. I can name just as many friends who grew up with two bedrooms as those who grew up in nuclear families. Again, I would say a lot of women from this generation settled for less because it was still a better option than… ending up alone. (You have to remember, this was the era of Bridget Jones and Sex In The City, when the prospect of being an older, single woman was seen as just about the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone.)

Which brings us to my generation. As the argument goes, nowadays, women and girls are refraining from entering relationships from the get-go, for fear that they are doomed to end in disaster.

What a hopeless solution.

Dispelling a narrative that I know many who are, and can. As a society, we need to do better at teaching young boys the value of being gentle, vulnerable and sensitive. Young girls are shaped by male standards, with structures teaching them exactly what a man needs from a relationship at an early age. Young boys do not have this. They are not taught to provide emotional support or, for that matter, to need it themselves, so we can hardly blame them when, years later, they fall short of this demand. Demands that would wholly benefit both parties.

The loneliness epidemic

There’s an argument that there’s little long-term gratification that dating apps offer compared to dating dynamics pre-Internet. At least, before the internet, there was a sense that even if a date or situationship occurred and ended for various reasons, there was still an experience to be had, good or bad, that became fodder for the group chat. Many of those dates would occur with people in your circle, wider network, friends of friends and places of social gathering. The stakes were higher and even if your date was a raging piece of shit, there was a likelihood that you’d see them again which would allow for a sense of shame to exist. 26-year-old designer, Jourdan, based in London, believes apps have influenced people to a more passive approach to dating. She says, “I think it has made dating less serious. No one is taking it seriously because there are so many options at their fingertips, so no one’s ready to commit to one thing. It is like a candy store, to be honest.”

Michael, a twenty-year-old content creator, believes that old and new values around dating are currently at odds, adding to the confusion as to what people want. “I think attitudes towards dating have become selectively traditional, mainly in ways that benefit women in most cases. While modern dating promotes independence and equality, certain traditional expectations persist, like men being expected to make the first move or cover the bill. At the same time, women no longer want to take on traditional roles like cooking and cleaning but still expect to be taken care of by a man. This creates a mix of old and new values depending on what suits the situation,” he says.

That much is still the case with dating apps, but the never-ending carousel of options often means it's hard to get off the train while it’s still moving. If you’re stuck in your house, struggling to meet up with friends due to time, affordability and the preference for digital interaction, the dopamine rush of getting a match can feel so euphoric to the point that getting off that train would leave you in a place of loneliness. Here, on the other hand, the stakes are much lower. It’s okay to ghost someone you’ve met on a dating app because of the endless conveyor belt of options.

Various apps have tried to level the playing field, such as Bumble, which was created to give more power to women by allowing them to initiate conversations rather than traditional dating apps, which still heavily centre on men. Generally, there will be more men than women on dating apps, and I’ve had female friends say that they often get a sea of likes on Hinge and Raya, they don’t bother responding to unless someone stands out. In some ways, this reflects IRL, but for men, navigating making the first move digitally isn’t as fluid and often just as daunting and confusing.

Breeze has attempted to marry both the organic, magical aspect of meeting someone with the normalcy of dating apps. Designed as an app to take dating offline, there will soon become a culture that Breeze ultimately creates if it becomes as popular as Hinge, Bumble and Tinder. Of course, the idea is that you take dates offline and delete them. Ultimately, if the end goal is being partnered with someone, then that seems like an obvious given. Every day at 7 pm, the app releases seven potentials; repeated cancellations will result in a one-week account suspension.

How much of a salve this idea is to the dating crisis many people in singledom experience remains to be seen. Punishing people for cancelling dates seems like it’ll deter people from using the app because sometimes, you just can’t be bothered to go on a date after a shitty day. You know, life, that thing that happens in between swiping left or right.

Overall, that is the conundrum; life can’t be categorised by dating intentions, locality, whether you smoke, whether you own a pet or cute little irrational fears. Of course, it’s good to know these things about potential dates and partners, but we learn these things through conversation and observation.

Rosters, sharing rent and ghosting

When observing dating culture in major Western cities, a common thread that emerges is that it is largely impacted by high living costs and wage stagnation.

While cities give us the allure of having more options and access to a wider dating pool, the social and economic conditions for young people and millennials living in large cities mean that few are their best selves in romantic relationships. If you’re waiting on an invoice that’s two months late and want to take your girl out, I can imagine that might put a strain on things.

That’s not to say living in a small village in the middle of nowhere is any better; many young people from small towns and villages often complain about a lack of options and overfamiliarity with dating. For most city dwellers, their ideal dating situation wouldn’t exist in a silo, it’d likely go hand in hand with their ideal living and work situation.

Substack is littered with articles and think-pieces on dating; the topic is a subject of discussion on Black Twitter to the point that users often form parasocial relationships with celebrities and influencers on dating shows such as Love Is Blind and Married At First Sight.

In an era of love languages and attachment styles, people have over-theorised love to the point that they’ve forgotten it’s a conscious act. There’s little room for error, imperfection or blemishes in modern relationships and if there is any slight discomfort, then sayonara. While this empowers women, particularly when the balance of power is unequal, the culture of cutting people off, whether romantic or platonic, is forcing each of us onto islands, making us all the more wary to step outside. It’s a form of emotional avoidance that goes hand in hand with ‘icks’ because the ick is often never the reason why people are turned off.

No wonder Faith Hill reports that teens are skipping out on the idea of relationships, a fundamental rite of passage for young people since time immemorial. On one hand, relationships in adolescence can either make or break young people, especially as intimate partner violence is still relatively high among girls. On the other hand, adolescent relationships can teach us about what we like and don’t like, and usually are our first opportunities to act out the kind of relationships we grow into.

Without putting the rose-tinted glasses back on, being a male teenager in the 2000s was an exercise in presenting your best self to the opposite sex, or at least desiring to present your best self. Teen magazines, dramas, pop music and films encouraged us to find love; we were rarely positioned as being at odds with the opposite gender, and if we were, it was because we were dancing toward each other.

These days, however, it does feel as though pop culture is placing men and women at odds to the point where many feel it’s much easier to avoid the concept of romance and dating completely. Maybe the labels are being redefined, not necessarily the parameters and emotions. Placing a label on a relationship demands expectation, whether you buy into it or not, and for a generation with seemingly less control over housing, education and wages, this seems like a tall ask. Expectations often remove our ability to decide for ourselves, and millennials, in particular, are masters at not being told what to do. Label-less relationships remove those expectations and make it easier for people to opt in and out, but with that, it places so many in a grey area of uncertainty. Perhaps that’s just it; the future is uncertain and unpredictable. Is there much appeal in being tethered to someone when you have no idea what will happen next month?

What young people are telling us

Young people want things to get better. Just as young people have always wanted. We are aware of the problems plaguing our generation, but we think it’s unfair to place the blame on us. We are not “anti-social” by nature, as some would seem to have it, but dealing with an entirely new set of structures and circumstances that make certain aspects of our lives more difficult – and others less.

Generalised nostalgia for a time before we came of age is not productive, especially when we don’t even reap the benefits of basking in memories of a time pre-dating apps and pre-Instagram. We are not so accustomed to these digital methods that we cannot appreciate the value of physical interaction. There is a craving for it to return.

“I’m done with dating apps,” says 24-year-old Londoner Bel. “I never end up being attracted to the people I match with because so much attraction takes place IRL. I might think someone is good-looking on a screen, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to fancy them in person.”

“Yeah,” agrees Lara, also 24, also from London. “I feel like the joy and excitement of meeting someone in person is completely stripped away when you meet over a dating app because it’s laid out for you on a plate. You know you are both there for the same reason, so there is no mystery.”

There is a desire for human connectivity. We see this in the increase of speed dating events over recent years and even things like running and chess clubs, which are rebuilding spaces for organic interaction and chance meetings.

While speed dating might not eradicate the ambiguity of dating apps (you're only gonna be at a speed dating event for one reason), it can help patch up issues surrounding in-person attraction. “Everything on a dating app, from looks to vibe, is curated,” writes Brookelyn-based Substacker Stephen Bradley, who recently attended his first speed dating event. “A face card match doesn’t equate to an emotional match, and the disappointing lack of alignment gives a sense of hopelessness. By engaging in unfiltered interactions, we can cultivate more meaningful and long-lasting relationships. Speed dating directs us in that direction.”

Speaking with one of the evening’s organisers, Zoe Zelken, Stephen learns that the team behind ‘Date Time’ believes speed dating could help to solve some of Gen Z’s dating predicaments. “Zoe explained that it sets our dating climate on a more real, down-to-earth path,” he relays. “Rather than hiding behind a screen, speed dating forces participants to be themselves off the bat. When you meet someone in person, she told me, you get an instant “gut check” of whether or not you connect.”

While Stephen did not find love at ‘Date Time’, he did find the experience a refreshing change to the endless fatigue of swiping left and right. Connecting with strangers can be fulfilling in many ways, whether romantic or not, and there is far greater meaning in these interactions than there is from reading a Hinge prompt.

With COVID-19 quite literally segmenting us into ‘support bubbles’, we have to start stepping outside of these again. We must relearn ways to forge bonds away from the hyper-filtered, non-reality of the internet – for these bonds are the ones that will truly last.

This takes risk and trust, both of which young people are statistically more averse to, understandably given the precarious times we live in. In a Hinge survey of Gen Z daters from 2023, while 90% of participants said they wanted to find love, 56% said that fear of rejection had kept them from pursuing a potential relationship, and 57% said they’d refrained from confessing their feelings about someone because they worried it would “be a turn-off.”

This suggests a discordance between what young people want and what young people do. And it is only through collective effort, a rejection of the group mentality that tells us we need to “play hard to get", that we might start to reverse this pattern and make emotional intimacy cool again. For is it not better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all?

What brands can do

The playing field feels more like a battleground littered with corpses of failed relationships, and as we return to the apps with the hope that ‘maybe this time, things will be different’, we’re soon left with this uneasy feeling that they eventually will be.

Dating brands shouldn’t wait for protocols, trends and cultures to emerge through the use of their apps before implementing strategies and campaigns that embrace the spontaneity and spark that comes from dating. There’s no reason why people can’t interact with dating app brands offline from launch. This approach would be valuable as it would allow brands to assess and better understand the needs of users outside of the research and development stage. Dating apps have spent millions on psychology to understand the nature of romance, dating and relationships, but overall, what they communicate to users comes into conflict with the desire for growth. And therein lies the problem: dating apps are tech-led first and operate in a different capacity than traditional Match.com-type online dating.

For so long, dating apps have been focused on being results-based rather than experience-based. Hinge ran with ‘the app designed to be deleted’ slogan for years before abandoning it. Someone internally must’ve realised that this wasn’t an accurate description of how the app is being used. However, it’s not a great strategy for keeping people on the app, not when terrible date stories can become fodder for great films, books and even catchups with friends at the pub. The shareholders’ only concern is growth, and creating an app that discourages people from returning doesn’t align with that. A user may have been using Hinge for free and found no success, but they may return and pay for a subscription as they may feel that this time, things will be different if they’re investing money into the experience.

Understandably, there’s not much data on dating for Gen Alpha, and given the world they’ll be coming of age in, this generation's dating behaviour will be influenced by Gen Z and millennials. However, the above are two examples of moments built around dating and romance that have created spaces both IRL and online to change the way we interact with one another. Dating is something that Gen Alpha will eventually participate in, but brands within that space will need to continue to encourage connection and intimacy offline.

It’s hard to see the role brands can play in fostering a healthier dating landscape. Dating apps enter the market promising to be different from the last, but ultimately, they contribute to the dire culture around dating. Over the past decade, advertising has changed to some degree, representing diverse relationship types beyond the heteronormative. Gen Alpha and some sections of Gen Z are beginning to reject tech and social media to connect better with the world around them.

While many people have issues with the current climate, the real problem lies in the lack of vulnerability and intimacy. At the very least, the brands in the romance and dating space can help foster the vulnerability and intimacy which so many crave. This shouldn’t be limited to dating brands alone, but all brands connected to culture in some way should play a larger role in helping people better connect. This doesn’t just have to be branded events with free drinks tokens, but something more meaningful that gets strangers talking to each other.