Culture Gen Z is breaking up with dating apps, Ofcom says

Gen Z is breaking up with dating apps, Ofcom says​

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Watchdog says Tinder, Hinge, Bumble and Grindr have all seen dip in use since last year

The UK’s dating scene is swiping left on popular apps such as such as Tinder and Hinge as younger people turn to real-life ways of connecting with potential partners, according to the UK’s communications watchdog.

Ofcom said the UK’s top four dating apps had seen a dip in use since 2023, with Tinder losing 600,000 users, Hinge shedding 131,000, Bumble declining by 368,000 and Grindr falling by 11,000.

Ofcom said the overall number of adults visiting a dating service in May this year – nearly 5 million, or about one in 10 – was broadly in line with the same period in 2023, but the slight decline could be linked to the shifting dating habits of members of gen Z, the demographic cohort born between the mid-90s and 2010.

“Some analysts speculate that for younger people, particularly gen Z, the novelty of dating apps is wearing off,” Ofcom said in its annual Online Nation report.

Luke Brunning, who runs a research network at the University of Leeds exploring the ethics of online dating, said the Ofcom data chimed with his own research.

“There is a growing romanticisation of in-person meeting and interaction. The ‘meet cute’ is becoming a trope in how people on social media talk about romance,” he said.

Brunning added that dating apps were still being used by young relationship-seekers, even if the plethora of online services sometimes made the experience difficult to navigate, while safety issues such as unwanted attention for female users had also been flagged in his research.

“Very few of them are turning to the apps as an exclusive means of setting up an in-person meeting. It’s much more fluid now,” Brunning said.

Tinder’s owner, Match Group, has admitted issues with attracting a younger audience, saying in January that its leading app would be focusing on “shaping an in-app experience that resonates better with today’s younger users”. It said gen Z users were seeking “a lower-pressure, more authentic way to find connections”.

Ofcom also found that dating services still had the biggest reach in younger adult age groups, reaching 18% of 18- to 24-year-olds and a similar proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds. It said two gay dating apps, Sniffies and Scruff, had entered the top 10 most popular dating apps.
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The Crack Spiders Bitch said:
“There is a growing romanticisation of in-person meeting and interaction."
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A "romanticisation of in-person meeting and interaction"? These people seriously lack self-awareness. Meeting in-person is how it was done for literally all of human history until the past 10 years.

I remember when online dating was considered embarrassing and shameful in the 2000's.
 
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From what I heard, they are a fucking cesspool, and it is very hard to even get the chicks you match with to even respond.

I think social media has real potential to fill the dating-app niche, just don't get into it with just the intention to (just) fuck.
Interest groups, local groups or even political or faith-based groups would be a better place to search for potential partners.
 
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I'll wait and see the figures.

Is this people are meeting in person more, or people are just settling into and not seeking to alter their single status?

I think it's more likely the latter. The venues and conditions that made dating apps popular have not changed, so the need for them hasn't either.
 
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To be specific, MEN are breaking up with dating apps.
According to recent studies, the average distribution on a dating site is 3 men to 1 woman.
It's a damn sausage fest so women just pick the best ones and the rest get left behind.
And you need a really photogenic face because almost nobody reads the profiles.
There are tricks (pictures of food or you making food work on bitches) but mostly you need to look really good.

Truth is, it's much easier to get a girl in person.
99% of people are awkward and don't know how to do things in a social environment without someone else initiating.
If you're confident and take action, even if the action is dumb, a portion of people will go along with you because nobody else is initiating.
That works on women.
You can't do that on a dating app really.

I'll be honest, I got with more girls on old ass pre-social media chatrooms than on dating apps.
Those were the days.
Maybe that shit will make a comeback.
It's a lot easier to start conversations in chatrooms and get together.
 
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Met my Fiancee on a dating app, we're pretty much a perfect match somehow. The main reason she swiped right on me according to her was because I used pictures from various outdoor hobbies I do, she found me physically attractive in them, and she saw that we worked in similar fields and liked what I wrote. Meanwhile I swiped right on any chick who I found attractive, didn't come across as crazy, was interested in an actual relationship, and didn't come across as a bot or NPC (way too many saying something like "Looking for the Jim to my Pam" or other stupid pop culture shit.)

Really is a romantic way to describe the beginning of a relationship, which is why we generally stick to talking about our first date instead and treating all that more like just meeting in a chat room when it comes to how we met. She was also a little annoyed when I told her what my strategy was and that I pretty much just saw the dating app account as a passive way of fishing like a fisherman letting out a longline.
 
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Hey Johnny Bravo said:
A "romanticisation of in-person meeting and interaction"? These people seriously lack self-awareness. Meeting in-person is how it was done for literally all of human history until the past 10 years.

I remember when online dating was considered embarrassing and shameful in the 2000's.
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A good chunk of Gen Z and Alpha is them rediscovering traditional things, giving it their own retarded names, and acting like they're the first people to ever do these things. That's just how bad things have gotten, Silent Gen, Boomers, and Millennials have Year Zeroed things so hard the later generations don't even know they existed. Xers, of course, simply are out of fucks to give, if they had any in the first place.
 
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Alexander Thaut said:
I mean, I get why.

Dating apps are just not worth it nowadays.
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Worthless to the vast majority of men.

Egoboost to all but the ugliest of women.

Also worthwhile to pigbutchering scammers. Bots, and instagram follow thots which make up the majority of the female profiles. which match which holds a virtual monopoly over online dating does not seem to lift a finger to combat while they continue to scam the wallets of desperate idiot men. While at the same time bashing these same idiot men that give them the lionshare of their revenue in virtue signaling feminist pr press releases which they seem to prefer to write over fixing their app.
 
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grump said:
Also worthwhile to pigbutchering scammers. Bots, and instagram follow thots which make up the majority of the female profiles
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That is exactly why I gave up on tinder almost as soon as I started using it and that was almost six years ago. Every person who recommended was unaware of how bad it had gotten or would suggest "Dude just like everything and see who responds lmao!" (Nevermind that strat would trigger what some called the "anti indian protocol") while a few people would recognize it used to be great but now it was a bunch of women farming instagram followers.
It is funny how I have met more people who found stable relationships via online games or forums than dating apps.
Lastly: are these apps even good outside of big cities? Cuz I have seen bugmen dump women the second they found out that they lived outside of the city and not even because of the distance but simply because "ew this is a poor neighborhood/city"
 
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