Gen Z is suffering from a depression in sex and relationships. From 2019 to 2023, the single rate among young people increased from 51 percent to 57 percent. young women, 32 to 45 percent; Over 50% of men aged 18-20 have never had an intimate partner. Fifty-two percent of single men are interested in dating, compared to 36 percent of single women, and 50 percent of girlfriends in their 20s aren’t dating at all.
Counterintuitively, dating apps also bear some of the blame. Swipe apps promise overwhelming options and opportunities to meet The One™️, but they also have perverse incentives to keep you single forever.
As a lonely 25-year-old, I have endured intermittent use of these apps. I joined in with the joy of being chased by pitchfork-wielding villagers. Despite a few dates, the relationships I’ve built were born out of chance face-to-face encounters. His recent YouGov data found that 66% of singletons had the same experience. To confirm my suspicions, I rejoined Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge and reported from a war zone.
This algorithm makes you endure enough frustration to pay for unlimited swipes.
We mistakenly assume that a dating app’s stated purpose is its actual purpose. We believe these make it easier for people to choose their perfect mate from a host of possibilities, including dating, getting married, and having a family, which is something we have always been reported to have wanted. is thinking. If they did, they wouldn’t paywall off options like filtering out fake accounts, anonymizing who likes you, and narrowing the criteria to men with triple sixes. Despite their superficial differences, all three are branches of the same twisted tree. Tinder’s parent company also owns his Hinge, and Bumble’s founder is a former Tinder executive. In fact, none of it is “designed to be removed,” and if it wasn’t removed, the company would go out of business. Without lone hopefuls, there would be no customer base. Instead, if the algorithm is sufficiently dissatisfied with the profile presented to you, you’ll pay for unlimited swipes and more control over what’s shown, but not so disappointed that it deletes the app. Probably not. This algorithm calculates the rate at which it finds people who are a good fit for you, selling your time to advertisers and driving them into premium subscriptions.
Is this by design? Christine Emba documents it as follows: rethink sexTinder’s first ad campaign in 2018 was “I’m single, sorry,” which was a strange phrase for dating. App to promote. The selling point was dating with “no rules, no detractors, and plenty of choice.” Tinder’s 2023 Spotify ad ends with “No matter what, every match leads to self-discovery.” Don’t think about how others will feel. Everything is up to you. Don’t swipe to find someone to settle down with. As a prerequisite for autonomous personhood, we mutually utilize each other for validation while maintaining perpetual availability. When it wears off, disconnect from the app and return to it for your next gratification. This is why some people don’t even swipe. I put my Instagram handle in my profile so that it gets noticed over time. Dating apps are an asset in an economy where we market ourselves as brand and lifestyle ambassadors, influencers, and mannequins. Love takes up so much time outside of work that I don’t pay attention to it.
The real purpose of an app doesn’t have to be designed to keep you single. As Marshall McLuhan said, “The medium is the message.” Through repeated use, the purpose of technology becomes clear through how human behavior fits into the incentives it sets. The pressure to reduce oneself to a few photos and a descriptive biography creates an incentive to oversexualize, exaggerate, or hide parts. That performance cannot be sustained as the relationship continues. Do these incentives encourage people to think like good partners? When conflict inevitably arises, why stay put and work through it? He’s just one swipe away and the hypothetical promise that a more perfect partner exists has overshadowed the relationship. These carousels of commodification gamify human connections, making them risky and transactional.
Reactionaries personified technology as “egregory,” when human inventions work against humans’ natural interests. Egregores are complex intelligences formed by the collection of human activities, and act as if they have a will of their own that influences humans. For example: Twitter purports to help spread information, but is actually a madhouse for journalists who have fallen into disarray. (I’m wearing this straitjacket, too.) The instruments we make may actually be “diabolical” in that they oppose human purposes. This is what McLuhan meant when he said, “The prince of this world is a very great electrical engineer.”
Dating apps are a Faustian bargain. In other words, it provides a false sense of ownership while consigning an active process (meeting a partner by chance in a social setting) to passive accumulation at the mercy of an algorithm. It creates an insatiable desire for newness that abhors obsession. Dating apps are not wish-granting genies, but act like gestalt beings that rebel against our desire to find a loving partner.
Men and women are not unapproachable.We’re lonelier than ever in a crowd
Another McLuhan concept that applies is the “global village.” It is about how the interconnectedness afforded by technology dislocates us from our belonging to places, people, and cultures. Dating apps have expanded the pool of potential partners beyond the local community to other cities and other countries. By increasing the amount of potential options, you reduce the concentration of high-quality, like-minded partners that make up the criteria for who is out there. They also become less considerate of others. Simply unmatching or blocking someone is not responsible. But matches that end with too many unappealing swipes or unpleasant interactions leave us burnt out and demoralized.
What is the solution? It is not, as some have suggested, a return to the anachronisms of pick-up art and cold approaches. At the end of the sexual revolution, before telephones, men and women mingled in social settings, often exchanging eye contact and alcohol. This was called the “90s.” Not only do Zoomers drink 20% less than Boomers of the same age, but with the advent of cell phones and their AirPods, social barriers are everywhere. Soulmates sit across from each other, swiping through each other’s apps, never making eye contact. This is why 59 percent of men between the ages of 18 and 25 have not approached a woman in the past year. In other words, it is difficult for men and women to approach each other. We are more alone than ever in a large crowd.
Nor is it just another app solution where you can practice conversing with the opposite sex using an AI chatbot. No further technology can solve this. The possibility of his Lysistrata on dating apps is doubtful. However, rebuilding local villages is possible.
My New Year’s resolution for baby boomers and Gen Xers is to introduce you to at least one single young man and woman you know. Even if it doesn’t lead to a date, it’s more likely to know what’s best for us than an app that makes money by making us feel lonely.
Do not abandon your duties as a village elder. Hear this swiped out voice of the Z’der generation. You have permission to intervene.