Dating apps seem to be a permanent part of the cultural landscape, including targeted apps that analyze their users based on faith and professional achievements. But while online dating tips and Hinge prompts are commonplace conversations between friends, there are some signs that dating apps (which arguably reached critical mass when Tinder was introduced in 2013) may be on the way to its end. Specifically, Gen Z is rejecting dating apps, and the stock prices of dating app companies are falling. Why might this be happening and what will replace this whole “wave”? Let’s put aside the allure and pitfalls of actually using apps for a moment and look at user data. A national Axios survey of 978 college-aged people found that 79% of respondents did not regularly use a dating app, and more than half met their most recent college mate in person, 14% through mutual friends and 15% randomly in person. This does not bode well for the immediate future of apps, because the rest of Gen Z (currently between the ages of 11 and 26) will reach dating age within the next ten years. Moreover, the results of these large companies do not look so good. When Bumble went public in early 2021, its stock price was around $70. At the time of publication and its duration, it hovers around $14. As for Match Group, the parent company of apps including Tinder and Hinge: Its stock has plunged 68% in the past year, after falling sharply in price the year before.

Why is this happening now?

We asked Nancy Jo Sales, journalist and author of Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno, for some insight. She conducted many interviews with millennials and Gen Z for her book and for Swiped: Hooking Up in the Digital Age, a documentary she wrote and directed about dating culture. Over the years, it has collected accounts of app-enabled sexual assault, fraud, racism, transphobia, and robbery of minors. Understandably, he has moved away from the idea that digital applications are harmful to users. “This is not a personal animus,” he said. “He’s a person of pace. Sometimes as a reporter you see something that feels very urgent because you see it harming people, as Upton Sinclair wrote about the meat industry poisoning people. I feel like that’s a similar thing happening now.” Until recently, all media coverage of the apps has been largely positive, Sales said, but she sees Gen Z, who get their news from social media, “where the [εταιρικά] media have failed, real people have gotten the truth and are posting real stories about what’s wrong with apps and how it doesn’t lead to solid relationships,” Sales said. “I think millennials, unfortunately, have been the ones most affected by the dating app culture,” Sales said, because of the technology that emerged during their youth. The journalist contrasts the experience of millennials with the feeling of her daughter graduating from college. “My daughter and her friends, none of them are on dating apps, nobody uses these things or very few. I think it’s a trend, and I’m happy because they’re going to have richer, happier relationships and they’re not going to be abused and unpaid work.” As unpaid work, Sales refers to how users, by posting photos and otherwise engaging with the apps, are actually doing work for the app, which seems more powerful the more people post to it.

If not apps, what?

Let’s just say that this situation does exist and dating apps continue to decline in popularity. Any hints on what the next big thing in dating is going to be? Maybe we’ll see more IRL group meetups like The Feels, a monthly ticketed singles night that pops up in Brooklyn and Philadelphia (it promises to “combine meditation, prompts, reflections + physical elements like eye gaze”). And there are singles clubs, such as Los Angeles-based SoSo (Singles Only Social Club), which has the tag line “Make friends, date, find the love of your life, leave.” And finally, the speed dating! If none of this sounds particularly novel, perhaps the world of the future hasn’t yet imagined the best possible mechanisms for pairing—but that doesn’t mean we have to worry about next-generation mating innovations.

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