Dating Apps Are Dying

Many of the people the author knows have either deleted dating apps or stopped using them, as they are rarely opened and no longer expected to deliver meaningful connections. The author, who has used multiple dating apps over the past eight years, has never formed a relationship or even gone on a second date with someone met on an app.

The majority of first dates end in disappointment or mutual ghosting. A 2026 Harris Poll found that two-thirds of singles are not using dating apps, while 80% of Americans view meeting someone in person as "cute" or "cool."

The author believes dating apps are dying because they do not encourage the patience, curiosity, and emotional investment that dating requires. The abundance of potential partners offered by the apps creates a burden as users make numerous small decisions each session, such as swiping, initiating a conversation, maintaining communication, arranging a date, or continuing to search for someone better.

This process can become emotionally exhausting, with a study by Liesel Sharabi finding that emotional exhaustion and feelings of inefficacy increased over time.

Dating apps expose users to far more potential partners than they would encounter offline, requiring hundreds of judgments about people known almost nothing about, leading to decision fatigue and cynicism. Rejection has always been part of dating, but apps increase our exposure to it, with every unanswered message, vanished match, and unexplained ghosting carrying a small emotional cost, potentially leading users to lose faith in the process.

Dating apps turn a complicated social process into something immediate and measurable, making it easier to mistake the absence of an immediate disaster for the presence of a connection. Offline attraction develops through ambiguous signals, but apps reduce uncertainty to a series of unmistakable outcomes. Dating apps have also gamified dating, with the goal shifting from forming a relationship to accumulating matches that provide immediate bursts of validation.

The author sees this every time they open dating apps, with matches often receiving no response. For many users, getting the match becomes enough, with the person on the other side becoming secondary to the proof that someone chose them. Despite exhaustion and cynicism, the game continues, with users opening the app almost automatically, swiping for a few minutes, and waiting for small rewards.

The behavior resembles playing Candy Crush more than looking for a partner, and the endless supply of profiles lowers the perceived cost of rejecting someone.