💌 Dating Gen Z: Two Opposing Truths

The role of dating apps and social media in the future of sex and relationships

First, some big news! GenZ Designs is now dcdx.

It means the rate of cultural change and is a nod to the derivative (dy/dx; which means the rate of change of y with respect to x). It is all about moving and changing with culture; our methods, our services, everything.

Here’s why, and here is our vision for building accessible and impactful research.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming…

❓What happens when a generation grows up with unprecedented access and exposure to sex and relationships?

True:

Gen Z is sexting more than any previous generation.

Gen Z is watching more porn than any previous generation.

Gen Z has the ability to find and flirt with nearly any single person around them (and around the world) through apps like Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge.

Gen Z is exposed to more of others’ love, sex, and relationships than any previous generation through entertainment and social media.

Also true:

Gen Z is having less sex than any previous generation.

Gen Z will be getting married later than any previous generation.

Gen Z is going on fewer dates than any previous generation.

What does Gen Z think of all this?

We ran two quick polls to better understand a few different parts of the generational sentiments emerging around these trending behaviors.

First, we polled a small sample from our network of 50,000+ Gen Z’ers to better understand their perception of dating apps and their impact on Gen Z.

“Do you think dating apps are harmful or helpful for our generation?”

66% of our sample of 351 Gen Z respondents indicated they believed dating apps to be harmful to our generation.

So why do significantly more Gen Z’ers believe dating apps to be harmful?

Indyah, a 19-year-old interviewed by Vice, gave the following related thoughts:

“Older generations didn’t have as much freedom as us to experience the diversity of dating. But thanks to the internet, my generation has been given more accessibility to different people. I think it’s such a good thing that we get to connect with a variety of people from all over the world. But, sadly, it means that a lot of authenticity has been lost. It’s hard to gauge if someone’s intentions are pure or not, because they’re showing and telling you what they want you to know, and you just have to take their word for it. It’s changed dating. A lot of people have expectations of you to give them attention – give them sex, even – without them having put any effort in to court you. It’s that instant gratification that our generation is so used to because it’s so easy to move on to the next one and have someone lined up on social media. So I do think it’s beneficial for us to take back some of those ‘old fashioned’ values”.

That sentiment of ‘old-fashioned’ values expressed by Indyah is a growing sentiment among Gen Z’ers, some of which have decided to take direct action against it.

Jamie Lee is a Gen Z’er and the founder of Flox, one of the many up and coming Gen Z-founded startups aiming to disrupt the dating/connection space.

Flox: “How we meet new people is about to change”.

Jamie recently was interviewed by our friend Casey Lewis, explaining her motivations to start the company:

“I was sitting on Hinge in the middle of the pandemic and realized I absolutely hated it. I thought, either I am not funny or this app sucks. It’s an inauthentic way to meet someone. I talked with my friends about this and they all had similar experiences. And in conversation, I said it would be so much more fun if we could just meet people together. 

The mission [of Flox] is to find a better way to connect people who should be meeting. We really believe that the best way to meet people is through mutual friends and in real life. We want to leverage technology to bring people together in person, which I think is something that's been missing for our generation.”

But what about the positives of dating apps?

Despite the harm these apps cause, there is hope and appreciation for what they are indeed helpful for. It is easier to connect and simpler to “date”.

Jordan, 18, said:

“With the girl I’m seeing now, I just DM’d her on Instagram after I had seen her around uni a few times, and we knew some of the same people. And then we just chilled at mine, watched some really bad films and talked for a while.

Zoë, 19, shared a similar sentiment:

A lot of people say that romance is dead because people text a lot more now. I’d say that older generations should embrace new technology, because texting actually isn’t such a terrible thing. It actually makes everything a lot easier, especially when you’re planning stuff or meeting up with people. It means that you can text someone you’ve never really met for a bit before actually meeting them”.

34% of our respondents, a non-trivial percentage, believed that apps were more helpful than harmful. For some Gen Z’ers, the benefits still outweigh the cons. Yet as the majority believe, and as Jamie keenly points out, the missing part of these apps is “how effective they are in bringing people together”.

How is technology being used by dating apps to make experiences more human?

One feature that all of the popular apps now offer is video dating. Tinder’s 2021 Year in Review study stated that “Video dates have turned into a first date staple for singletons with mentions of “video call” in Tinder bios growing by 52% globally.”

But do Gen Z’ers really want that? We asked our network what they really thought of video dates; if they believed that a video call was a valid first date.

q: do you think video calls are a valid first date?

76% of our sample of Gen Z’ers said they did not believe video calls were a valid first date.

Despite the access to the tools that can make us more connected, it seems there is a deep, potentially hidden generational resistance to these methods of connecting. That longing for “old-fashioned” dating Indyah mentions earlier appears widespread, even if not demonstrated through action.

Is unprecedented access to relationships and sex causing Gen Z to reject and shy away from those same things?

Léonard, 18, and another Gen Z’er interviewed in that Vice piece said the following about dating:

“We can meet a lot of other people before we settle down with someone for a lifetime, but I do think that makes it less romantic. And although it’s good that attitudes towards sex are more free, it has made dating a little bit harder. Sometimes relationships aren’t actually based on anything more than sex, and that’s not what makes a relationship”.

Léonard goes on to compare these behaviors to those “old-fashioned” ones of previous generations:

“I do think that when our grandparents had chosen their partner, it was because they really loved them. But now we look for the little things that bother us and go onto the next person. Older generations would send letters or run away together, and this is lost with the multiple encounters which we’re doing now. It may be seen as "old school", but it’s still something that is really important to me”.

The role of social media in this emerging behavior

One of our core generational theories at dcdx, and embedded in the meaning of our new name, concerns the growing rate of exposure to elements of culture such as entertainment through social media. With Instagram, everything is public and made public with intention. Our generation is growing up exposed to the intimate relationship details and sex lives of cultural icons.

Relationships and sex is more public than its ever been, thanks to entertainment and social media. Shows like Love Island, The Bachelor and Bachelorette (an honest guilty pleasure), Love is Blind, Too Hot to Handle, Are You The One, and the list goes on and on (sorry if I missed your favorite).

And yet these are only the culturally known examples - what is perhaps more relevant to this nuance is the portrayal of the relationships of our friends.

On Instagram, the relationships of our friends and acquaintances are public. Josie, another interviewee in the Vice piece, says:

“Instagram can make you feel like other couples are doing more and are better than you. I feel like it's taken away the essence of what dating is”.

If you didn’t post your 6 month anniversary with your partner on your IG story, do you really love them?

This is a pressure felt by many Gen Z, and an unhealthy one at that. Anniversary posts, IG and Snap stories to show others proof that you’re spending time with your significant other, these are the realities that face Gne Z relationships today.

And what happens when we introduce TikTok into the fold? TikTok does not highlight the relationships of your friends or celebrities. It shows us the relationships - in intimate detail - of random people across the world.

#relationship and #relationships combine for nearly 130 BILLION views. For some perspective, #sports has 87.8B views, #movies has 41.4B views, and #school has 113B.

The state of relationships is so public that in a matter of days, the entire world can be talking about you and your partner. Remember couch guy? In a piece detailing his experience as “Couch Guy”, Robert McCoy (guess he does have a name!) says:

I, an ordinary college sophomore, became TikTok’s latest meme: Couch Guy. TikTok users made parody videos, American Eagle advertised a no-effort Couch Guy Halloween costume, and Rolling Stone, E! Online, The Daily Show, and The View all covered the phenomenon. On TikTok, Lauren’s video and the hashtag #CouchGuy, respectively, have received more than 64 million and 1 billion views.

“I, an ordinary college sophomore, became TikTok’s latest meme”. A powerful reminder that dating is no longer private. McCoy goes on to conclude:

“But on TikTok, algorithmic feedback loops and the nature of the For You page make it easier than ever for regular people to be thrust against their wishes into the limelight”.

Our theory is that this is certainly a contributing factor to the declining rates of sex and dating that this generation is seeing.

Add one more critical factor…COVID

One last factor we will touch on in this piece is the addition of COVID into this dynamic. COVID has fundamentally changed the social development of Generation Z, and most certainly in the dating sphere.

What happens, when amidst a massive decline in sex, dating, and marriage rates, the world removes the option of meeting people in person entirely?

While it is still early and behaviors are still being shaped, it appears that COVID may be acting as an accelerant of the “old-school” dating sentiments felt by Gen Z’ers. Forced onto Tinder, Bumble and Hinge, the longing for in-person dating experiences seems to grow stronger and stronger, fitting right into the nostalgic tendencies overwhelmingly grasped by this generation.

We believe dating to be one of culture’s biggest predictors for Gen Z. And right now, signs seem to point to the cultural pendulum swinging back; away from complete digital dominance toward digitally-enabled and enhanced in-person experiences, toward a new old-school driven by nostalgic desires and simplicity.

To build that future, brands need to adapt.

Adapt or die.

(sorry for the dramatic ending)