Why Gen Z Is Ditching Dating Apps
Why Gen Z Is Ditching Dating Apps
"Gen-Z daters want to explore what many of us have forgotten how to do: meet people to date as we go about our lives."
So.. it’s definitely their fault somehow and not…. I don’t know… enshitification?
The article says as much. But it's also definitely both. While the dating app scene has been abysmal for the last 10 years or so, Gen Z is also a lot less sexually active than previous generations were at their age. There've been a few reports on how Gen Z is having less sex, and how they have less demand for sex in media because they grew up inundated with sexualized media their whole lives. It's pretty interesting to see the attitude shift toward sex with the generations.
This brings up an interesting point because my first thought when I read "inundated with sexualized media their whole lives," my first thought was, "In this Puritan culture?!" On the one hand, ads are all about using sex to sell products, while on the other, advertisers want nothing to do with anything that isn't 'kid friendly' content. You just need to look at how sanitized the internet has become by corporations to see that at work.
But I think there's something to be said there, and I think it goes deeper than just "the kids these days live in a Godless society of homosexual perverts" or whatever. I think the normalization of sex and availability of information about sex and sexuality has probably influenced it. I'd also say that the current state of the world and the stress of daily life have as much of an influence on this as the amount of sexualized media in their everyday lives. It's been a noticeable thing with Milennials having less sex and fewer kids from stress, both financial and otherwise, and I see no reason that wouldn't continue to trickle down to other generations. And even the amount of media out there, regardless of type, has just as much of an effect. If you have books to read and movies to watch, you're less likely to pop out kids accidentally because you were bored and got frisky.
I can’t blame enshittification on this one. The dating app model doesn’t work, period. Even in the case of a completely free, non-profit app, you still have the problem that as people pair off they leave the dating pool.
The fundamental problem is that there’s a nonzero subpopulation of people who either have no interest in or are incapable of forming a stable long term relationship. As the dating pool filters over time, these folks get more and more concentrated in the population. This leads to the experience getting worse and worse for people who are interested and capable because they keep matching up with the wrong people.
But how do you keep making the line go up, especially in a "market" with such a guaranteed drop-off point in user retention? You can do what these companies do and fill your apps with bots to keep engagement metrics up and users coming back as they fail to date your fake users. I'd call that enshittification, and it probably makes everything worse in this case.
Not just zoomers.
I'm a grumpy old-inneial, and I dumped them a while ago.
The big reason is they've become fucking awful exploitative shitshows. Paywalls for everything, nonstop popups to buy shit, push notifications about things that you should pay for, fake messages that there's "waiting matches" if I just pay $39.95, and the dark pattern bullshit you expect off scam websites: limited time sales, limited volume sales, 'act now or it's gone forever' nonsense.
And, if that wasn't bad enough, what you would get, if you paid for it, is flakes, fakes, scammers, and catfishers. Like, while hovering in the free pity-zone you get, I got a ton of matches. I'd say out of ~60 matches, 25 were outright scams (Oh hello, I am kindly wanting to get laid, please contact me on the app I use every day, telegram!), 20 were fakes (quick reverse image search showed that shockingly, that image was, in fact, not someone who felt the need to actually use dating apps), 10 were people who had decade old pictures or very, very selective angles, and the last 5 were conversations that totally went to plans and then... nothing.
Now, I'm gay, so I already have a HUGE advantage over the poor straghts, because everyone is there to get laid, and thus the bullshit is usually a lot more minimal. Don't have to convince a dude all that hard, or play the make-sure-you-answer-the-question-correctly shit my straight friends have to deal with.
But, even then, over the course of a month, it was just a case of being nagged to death to spend money, and every interaction being total bullshit, which doesn't really make you want to spend the time OR money.
And before you assume it's just me, I went on dates and uh, more, 3 times in the same month off people I met from Snapchat. From the random-people-you-should-add list. So, I'll assume it's not just me, and that those apps have rotted to the point they're literally worse than random people on Snapchat, which is a hell of an achievement.
And I'll 2nd the just meeting people at things in real life. People can't play the stupid shit games if they're standing in front of you: it's hard to be a scam or a fake, and your ability to catfish is limited to trying to suck your gut in, which isn't really something someone is likely to miss you doing.
I do think, though, that there were useful dating apps before they got ingested into the match.com umbrella, but they have been, so it's just a wilderness of enshittified piles of poo as far as you can see.
Dating is for people with a future. We have all realized in our subconscious that there is no future anymore. At least, not a good one.
Nah fucking is even more fun without a future
Don't say "dating apps" like there's not a monopoly - this is all Match
because every dating app is 70% males, 25% trolls, 4% female chatbots, 0.9% trans, 0.1% females. and every single message with your match costs $10
dis mf said females
At least he kept it consistent with males
It sucks because dating apps are a pretty trash experience all around, and definitely have some fundamental demographic issues, but god damn do the incels go wild whenever the conversation comes up.
That overwhelming male engagement is why Grindr has been so much fun on the whole.
There's a pun in there to be had...
It's got nothing to with "generations". Young people don't need dating apps as much because their social lives are better. Wait until they're 28 working at a shit job with minimal human interaction. They'll be on those apps.
lol . . . thanks TIME.
I ditched it just because fpr the few contacts I could establish all of them ghosted me after the first outreach.
Like okay, why even give mw a thumbs up if you don't care anyway.
Thus I purged the app and live my life happier by just not giving a fuck about that.
If the situation offeres the opportunity I'll take it. Else it's whatever.