It’s hardly a secret that dating is a mess today. Young adults are not happy with the state of things, and it’s certainly not producing the social goods that matter most: marriage and babies. Marriage and fertility rates have dropped by more than half in the last several decades. Society cannot continue without these, and neither happens unless boy meets girl. This is why the dating crisis matters.
A new national survey conducted jointly by the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) and the Wheatley Institute gives us some much-needed perspective on the dating recession. While providing both good and bad news, their conclusions are mostly hopeful.
Using a nationally representative sample of thousands of unmarried adults aged 22-35, it found that while 60 percent of men and 47 percent of women expressed interest in starting a relationship with someone, a remarkable three-quarters of women (74 percent) and nearly two-thirds of men (64 percent) have never or seldom dated in the last year. This sex distinction notes a concerning shift happening with emerging men and women.
Pew Research Center reported late last year that while girls have traditionally been more likely to say they want to get married one day, boys are now more likely to say this — and by the sizable margin of 74 to 61 percent. Young men saying this has remained unchanged for the last 30 years, but girls desiring marriage has dropped 22 points. However, the majority of both still want to marry.
The IFS/Wheatley study bears this out. Only 14 percent of their nationally representative sample of 5,275 young adults said they do not expect to marry, while 61 percent said they definitely expect to marry, and 25 percent said they were unsure if it would happen.
This good news is evident in a new phenomenon overtaking elite universities such as Stanford, Princeton, MIT, and Columbia. It’s called Date Drop, invented by a Stanford grad student to help match students for dating opportunities. His campus has 7,500 undergraduates, and more than 5,000 of them have used the matchmaking algorithm, leading The Wall Street Journal to say it “has consumed the school — and highlighted the challenges of finding love.”
Yet, the article notes, today’s young adults are “intimidated by real-life courtship and overwhelmed by the endless scroll of dating apps.” Date Drop is attractive because it allows friends to play matchmaker, helping connect classmates who they think would be great together. The algorithm tests their compatibility, and users excitedly wait for new matches to “drop” every Tuesday evening. It elevates community wisdom over consumerist swiping.
So dating interest is high and intentions are more positive than most would assume. The IFS/Wheatley findings show 83 percent of women said “creating emotional connections” was an important purpose for dating, while 76 percent of men said this. The exact same share of women (83 percent) also said “forming serious relationships” was an important result, while 74 percent of men agreed. Much lower shares of men and women, 55 and 35 percent, respectively, said they were dating for physical intimacy.
Hook-up culture is thankfully dying. Meaningful emotional and serious romantic relationships are clearly what most young adults are after today. So why the drastic dating drought among young men and women?
Self-doubt, not lack of interest, is the presenting problem. Sadly, only 1 in 4 young adults reported feeling “confident when approaching someone I’m interested in,” 38 percent “believe I am attractive to potential dating partners,” and just 37 percent “trust my judgement when it comes to choosing a romantic partner.” Furthermore, only 28 percent were able to stay positive after a bad date or a relationship setback.
When it comes to basic human behavior on a date, the responses were equally discouraging. Only about a third said they were comfortable talking about their feelings with a potential date. Remarkably, only 42 percent felt “good at managing my emotions on a date,” and just 36 percent thought they were “good at picking up on social cues when dating.”
However, the largest barrier to dating was feeling one did not have “enough money for dating activities.” Fifty-eight percent of men expressed this, and curiously, so did 47 percent of women. Were these women feeling the financial load their dates carried, or are they being called on to carry some of the dates’ costs? The researchers were not sure. Regardless, both men and women see finances as the largest hindrance to going out together.
Fear of getting into a serious relationship, losing personal freedom, or not wanting long-term commitment are thankfully far less expressed concerns. If you are going to get bad news on the state of dating today, this is the kind of bad news you want because you can work with it relatively easily.
Each problem can be solved by some basic dating education, as our current dating crisis is one of confidence and creativity. Clearly, our nation’s young adults need older adults and peers to come alongside and talk them through their fears about being good dating partners.
Families, schools, churches, and ministries such as Focus on the Family, where I work, can certainly go far in developing dating confidence- and skill-building efforts for teens and young adults. We must get creative and appreciate that more social media is not the answer. It is one of the major factors perverting teens and young adults’ sense of confidence and ability to interact with one another as healthy human beings.
Our dating help must come “IRL,” in real relationships between actual people, face to face, eye to eye, emotion to emotion. After all, this is precisely what young people are telling us they need. It must happen where people actually meet, such as between families, with generational destiny and growth in mind. Church, with its shared sexual, familial, and relational values, is another great place to meet and introduce people. Our young people are impoverished without these vital resources. Parachurch organizations can provide the resources, creative ideas, and encouragement these family and faith-based efforts will need.
A very good nascent example comes from Katy Faust and her team at Them Before Us via a four-part series she created on her Substack. It explains why it’s time to “kiss dating hello” again to save civilization — a real-life relationship-building effort.
Dating-wise, our young adults have told us what they desire and what’s holding them back. The good news is their desires are largely good, their barriers are wholly fixable, and easily so. The bad news will be if the rest of us fail to listen and don’t offer the doable help they clearly need.
Boys and girls want to meet. They just need some important sage advice and encouragement. Our civilization’s tomorrow demands we help them.
