“Since the beginning of the year, every client I’ve had that’s single has said, ‘I can’t do this online dating thing anymore. I would sooner tear my hair out than go on another Hinge date.’ ” That’s a local dating coach talking about the ways dating seems to have hit a major inflection point. So, in case you’re single and wondering what’s gone wrong lately, it’s not just you. And it’s not just Fort Worth. When Austin-based Bumble — the second most-downloaded dating app in America after Tinder — laid off 30% of its workforce last year, it hammered home the broad and steep decline of the apps that have ruled relationship-finding for decades. What’s taking their place? Some people are sticking with the apps and just trying to do digital dating better. Others are going back to the old-fashioned approach, trying to meet partners face to face in real life through clubs, teams, and interest groups. And, although it violates the spirit of Valentine’s Day season to suggest it, could it be that some are just giving up on love altogether? It could. “I do think people are giving up,” said Ashley Shihab, the above-quoted Dallas-based dating and life coach. “People are burning out. The same way you would burn out on a job, people are burning out on dating.” Death of Apps It’s not entirely clear that everybody or even most people are canceling their search for a relationship. However, it is plain and unmistakable that the dating apps have been hit hard. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about Bumble, market leader Tinder — part of Dallas-based dating app titan Match Group — Hinge, or any of the other plethora of digital yentas out there. The themes tend to be identical: declines in paying subscribers, fewer newer sign-ups, and broad-based user burnout with the swipe-and-message approach to finding connection. The apps are stumbling for one major reason: People don’t like them. When Forbes magazine surveyed 1,000 app users in 2024, 78% said they at times felt emotionally, mentally, or burned out from the experience. Part of the explanation for app wilt is their previous success. When apps first entered the mainstream 20 or so years ago, they diverged enormously from the tried-and-true methods of meeting people at church, school, and work that had served singles since time immemorial. “There was a lot of excitement about the idea of meeting people you wouldn’t be able to otherwise meet and having this wide access to other partners,” said Sarah E. Hill, a TCU psychology professor. “A lot of the enthusiasm about that has waned.” The apps’ ability to serve up seemingly endless potential new mates, while initially appealing, ultimately worked against them. “When you have an infinite number of options, it decreases your satisfaction with any one option you choose,” Hill said. This appears to be basic human psychology. It operates whether you’re choosing a jar of jelly or a lifetime partner. It’s familiar to anybody who recalls how easily they could pick a television show when Fort Worth had only four broadcast channels and compares to scrolling through the hundreds of cable programs available today only to decide that nothing is worth tuning in to. Excess optionality makes online daters reluctant to commit, Hill said. By that, she means any commitment at all. Something as trivial as meeting for coffee or having a phone chat seems more likely to make it harder to pick someone better in the future than to connect you with someone acceptable now. Just as the slightest commitment seems to be asking too much, even minor variances from the hypothetical ideal become ample cause to reject a prospect. “This person likes the third season of West Wing, and that’s the worst one, so enough of that,” Hill said. As if all this is not enough, there’s online fakery. “Modern ways of connecting, particularly digitally, can allow individuals to misrepresent themselves in small and large ways,” said Rachel Joy Voth Schrag, associate professor of social work at UTA. “This makes people wary of forming connections or committing to others, particularly if they have previous experiences of folks they met in online spaces misleading them — kittenfishing — or trying to take advantage of them for money or resources — romance scamming.” Want something else to blame for your empty social calendar? Try the economy. “There are suggestions that an increased sense of economic vulnerability, including job instability and housing instability, is connected to people feeling less comfortable dating, because of the financial cost of going on dates, the need to focus on economic priorities first, and the sense that they are not in a space to make long-term commitments,” Voth Schrag said. Last but perhaps not least we have the tinfoil-hat explanation. This one says the apps are intentionally sabotaging your dating life. As conspiracy theories go, it’s not that farfetched. Dating apps run on algorithms, Shihab noted. The dating services have had decades of gathering data and market-testing to tune their algorithms to do all manner of jobs. They can and do, for instance, present potential subscribers with particularly alluring matches only to then barricade the best choices behind paywalls. Is it crazy to think they might show only near-misses interesting enough to keep you paying for subscriptions and premium features without ever presenting your actual soulmate? Shihab doesn’t think so, because if you get into a long-term relationship, naturally, you’ll cancel your subscription. “It’s an algorithm, and it’s all trying to keep you on that app,” Shihab said. “Their goal is not to help you meet somebody.” Conceivably, you could be feeling some or all of these frustrations but still not be ready to give up yet. What are some different approaches you could take to online dating? First, stop blaming other people, Shihab said. Own your part, and be the change you want to see. If other people’s profiles seem too skimpy, for instance, pack yours with revealing detail. If others seem to want only surface conversations, strive for authenticity and openness in your communications. At the same time, even if you want to stay on the apps, try limiting their use. One of the big changes to online dating is that today it’s mostly done through apps running on smartphones that didn’t exist 20 years ago. The ubiquity of smartphones means your dating app is also ubiquitous. That’s changed online dating from something you do when sitting at a computer to something that interrupts face-to-face meetings with notifications that you just got a like or message. Constantly monitoring dating app activity like it’s social media is a recipe for burnout, Shihab said. “I tell my clients, if you want to do these dating apps, put limits around it,” Shihab said. “Only get on for 30 minutes a day or don’t have the notifications set, so it’s not interrupting. Put something around it, so it doesn’t become the black hole that is TikTok and Instagram.” App Alternatives Believe it or not, a few folks today still look for love in all the real places. Does that mean antiquated ideas like speed dating, matchmaking services, singles meetups, and social sports leagues? It does, and they might be worth a look. “There are some who are trying to meet people by going analog and finding potential partners the old-fashioned way,” Hill said. “These are things like joining clubs, taking up interests, going to conferences, taking up a new hobby, being more engaging at the gym, playing pickleball.” Flirting at the grocery store, learning to line dance, and other real-life methods of meeting someone have built-in limitations. Chief among them is the fact that most people you might approach in the wild aren’t available because they’re already in relationships, but face-to-face courting has similarly potent pluses. “There are some things you can’t get from pictures and communication,” Hill said. “It could be smell, the sound of their voice, the way they move, little mannerisms. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. A face-to-face interaction is worth a billion words.” It’s harder than giving your credit card number to an app, but you can get a shot at one of those billion-word interactions if you’re intentional about it, Shihab said. Start by working on yourself. If you want to pick one trait to boost, low self-confidence is one of the most common issues she sees in her clients. Then start connecting with people in as many face-to-face ways as you can think of. “This is about building a network and a community,” Shihab said. “If you want to have a relationship, start by having a life. The more you have activities you enjoy and a variety of relationships, friendships, and mentorships, the more likely it is you’ll meet somebody with whom you have something in common.” Just to keep things interesting, be open to weirdness. Don’t rule anything out. You could meet someone shopping at Walgreens as easily as you could be connected by an algorithm. “I know people who have met because they got in a car accident,” Shihab said. “It’s like he rear-ended a girl on the highway, and they dated.” Dating and life coach Ashley Shahib says her clients report burning out on dating just like they might burn out on a job.Monika Normand The Death of Dating There’s still another way to deal with dating frustration, and that’s to give up. This is an actual trend. “There has been a real increase in single individuals who are not actually interested in or pursuing dating,” Voth Schrag said. Indeed, back in 2022, the Pew Research Center found a solid majority of single Americans weren’t looking for romance on Valentine’s or any other day. And worries about COVID were the least important of several reasons. Tops on the list: “Just like being single.” No matter what Pew’s pollsters found, you don’t hear a lot of hit songs extolling the virtues of sleeping alone, so why are people turning away from all forms of dating? TCU’s Hill suspects that real-world connection skills have atrophied due to over-reliance on digital communication. This may be especially true of more recent generations. “I think that younger people haven’t been raised to interact,” Hill said. “They don’t know how to make telephone calls. Kids just don’t know how to interact with each other because they’ve spent their lives online.” The particular challenges men face today could be another factor. For a while now, males have been less likely than females to attend college. They also have fewer appealing employment opportunities. These trends make it harder for members of both genders to hook up. “Men who don’t have education or job prospects are feeling like they’re not getting what they would like in the dating market because there aren’t a lot of women who are interested in them,” Hill said. “Women who are educated and accomplished aren’t getting what they want either, because they are looking for someone who has at least as much education and accomplishment as themselves.” The most committed dating ditchers can just go all-digital. Joi is an AI sex chat company that provides users with all-artificial companions. Despite being limited to chat, these seem to have some appeal. Joi reported its April 2025 survey of 2,000 members of Gen Z found 83% could have a deep emotional bond with an AI partner. Almost as many would consider marrying one, whatever that means. These and related digital services will likely find some users, Hill said. “You’re going to have some small pockets of the population that are turning to AI to meet their emotional needs. You’re going to have people having their sexual needs met with pornography. Some people are opting out and fulfilling their desires for connection and sexual release digitally.” UTA professor Rachel Joy Voth Schrag suspects economic and safety worries are behind disenchantment with apps and dating.iStock.com Dating’s Future Somewhere between app burnout and AI love lies the future of dating. AI-based dating is one possibility that kind of blends these two. Ditto, an AI dating matchmaking service for college students, launched last year promising to match relationship-seekers using data they put into the service, as well as planning their dates for them. Another, Three-Day Rule, updates a traditional matchmaking service with AI coaches trained by real human matchmakers. In addition to these startups, Match-owned Tinder is testing an AI feature called Chemistry that it says will get around the endless swiping necessary to identify potential dates. If AI works better, it may be no bargain. A new AI plan being tested by Grindr, the leading app for LGBTQ+ daters, could cost more than $200 a week. Despite the discouraging trends, it’s likely too soon for us to give up on love, at least as a species. “There’s a lot about attraction we don’t have figured out,” Hill said. That leaves room for a turnaround. And optimism persists. Match’s 2025 survey of 5,000 American singles found most — 57% — felt they would someday find true love. The youngest, Gen Zs aged 18 to 29, were the most hopeful, with 80% envisioning themselves eventually enjoying the real thing. Some of those optimistic types may be recalling that love and sex are not exactly new on the scene. “We’ve inherited our brains from millions of years of successful survival and reproduction by our ancestors,” Hill said. “The one thing our ancestors have had in common is the ability to find a mate and reproduce.” So, whatever you’re feeling or facing, or however much you have to evolve to cope with the current situation, know that Mother Nature is on your side. “We have a brain meant for pair bonding and love,” Hill said. “People are always going to want relationships and sex.” The post Swipe This! appeared first on Fort Worth Weekly.
