Today, Explained - The death of dating

Episode Date: June 19, 2026

Gen Z is saying no to dating and backing away from romantic relationships. This episode of The Gray Area explains why. This episode was produced by Beth Morrissey and Thor Neureiter, mixed by Shannon Mahoney and Cristian Ayala, fact checked by Melissa Hirsch, and hosted by Sean Illing. Photo by Michael Nguyen/NurPhoto via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Elling, host of the gray area, and today I'm bringing me today explained audience a special edition of the show. The gray area takes a philosophy-minded look at culture, technology, politics, and the world of ideas. Each week, we invite a guest to explore a question or topic that matters, from the state of democracy to the struggle with depression and anxiety, to the nature of identity in the digital age. Each episode looks for nuance and honesty in the most important conversation. of our time. On today's episode, we're diving into dating, and in particular, how the internet has made dating so challenging for Gen Z.

I do believe that most people want to be loved. You know, they want to be seen. It was more that they didn't know how to get there. They didn't feel confident, almost in their skills and understanding to make it happen for themselves. That's coming up. Support for this show comes from Fetch Pet Insurance.

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Fetch is the most complete pet insurance. Get paid back up to 90% of vet bills. You can use any vet in the U.S. and Canada. are in network. Go to fetchpet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet.com slash save. This is the gray area. I am Sean Elling. My guest today is Christine Emba. She's a writer and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Christine writes about sex, dating, loneliness, gender, religion, social norms, basically all the moral anxieties of modern life. But really, this is a much broader conversation about why Gen Z is retreating from dating and relationships all together,

and how the Internet is supercharging all of those trends. I started with the question, why doesn't Gen Z date anymore? I hear a couple of things. First, I think, is a general sense of anxiety around interacting with other people. So one of the things that I cited in my New York Times piece was this major survey that came out. It was done by the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institute at BYU. And they did a nationally representative study of Americans ages 22 to 35. And then they narrowed that down to people who explicitly said that they were interested in relationships or getting married one day and who are currently not married. And they asked about dating. And the first line of the report is so dark to me.

They're like, top line conclusion is that we are in a depressed dating economy, which, like, makes me depressed just to say, frankly. Yeah. And then the reasons that people cited for not dating were really just, like, anxiety-based. First, there was the idea of, like, money. which speaks to the precariousness. Like, dating is expensive. I'm not sure if I have enough money, et cetera, to take people out on dates.

But then also, like, 50% of people talked about having issues with what the survey described as dating efficacy, which really, when they broke it down, meant that they didn't think that they knew how to or were confident enough to approach someone of the opposite sex. They weren't confident that they could, like, read social cues. They weren't confident that they could accept rejection and, like, bounce back if, you know, they dated someone and it didn't work out. So because of their anxiety, it's exactly the cycle that you've stated. They were just, like, opting out of doing it. And I hear a lot of this anxiety when I've gone to college campuses and talked to young people myself, too. There's just this worry about getting it wrong.

You mentioned the dating apps. I mean, you would think on the surface that should make dating easier. But again, it's that easiness, right? It's the frictionlessness of the whole thing, which wipes away the courtship process, where you actually, where you have to encounter the other and learn about the other and allow them to learn about you, which is bumpy. And yes, has a lot of friction. But that's life in the world with other people.

And again, as that becomes more intolerable, the idea of doing that becomes scarier for understandable reasons. And I have a lot of sympathy for people who have grown up, become young people in this environment. I mean, it just feels really stacked against social flourishing and emotional well-being for lack of. have a better work. Like many of the technological developments over the past 10 to 15 years, I think that dating apps were something we were all very excited about when they first happened, like, yeah, this should make things easier. And then they've kind of turned out to be a social cancer. You know, one thing that I also hear from younger people about dating apps and, I mean, also from older people, honestly, is that first, especially men seem to feel like they experience

just so much rejection on dating apps because, you know, you're swiping through people like a deck of cards. You see that there are so many people out there and then you try and match with them and they don't match with you. Or you start a conversation and it doesn't go anywhere or they unmatch. And it's like a volume of rejection that is kind of abnormal for a human person to experience. And I think that kind of sours people on the use of the apps and sometimes on the opposite sex. women experience this rejection too, but also experience a lot of harassment and sometimes like really scary things on the apps and the way that people approach them and talk to them. And so I think that can dim their view of the opposite sex. And then there is also just like the way that the apps are set up, right? I mean, like you really are swiping through hundreds of people. like you don't know what they're looking for. They don't know who you are.

It's very easy to treat people poorly or casually or waste people's time. And so it begins to feel like a slog. Yeah, you're shopping for commodities, which is not how you want to be related to as a human person. And also kind of crowds out other, I think, more healthy options for dating that we used to have in the past. You know, like if you go to a bar, these days, you realize that people aren't sort of mixing up and talking to each other, buying people drinks. There's almost a stated assumption in many public places that, like, okay, we know that

the apps are where romance happens. So I'm not going to bother anyone in real life. I'll just wait to see if they're on the app. But then if you're not matching with people, like you don't get that practice. There's not that human interaction. And so, yeah, things begin to feel very cold. I've heard you say that men and women, at least seem to be withdrawing in different ways, certainly on their surface, right? Like men more into grievance and the self-optimization women, in a lot of cases, seem to be just decentering men altogether. Do you see those as parallel responses to the same world,

or is there something importantly different about the way ginsie men and women are adapting or reacting? to the conditions. I think, and this is not totally separate from dating, but also a larger sort of question and phenomenon in and of itself, we're seeing a real gender divergence in younger generations. And this became really notable during the 2024 elections, right, where young men tended to remain in the center or move in a slightly more conservative direction,

and young women voted far. to the left. And that seems kind of representative of how the sexes are separating in real life, too. When I talked about sort of dating apps and other situations, sort of turning men and women off of each other, I think younger women especially are more primed to think that men are sort of dangerous, bad, gross, too conservative, kind of a risk. And men are, again, I guess I'm going to like, hashtag not all men, hashtag not all women, tend to see women as like not liking them, man bashing, and also like kind of users and untrustworthy themselves. And I would say that a lot of this is fueled by social media, too.

And again, the amount of time that people spend on social media in this moment. Like, if you're on YouTube and you're watching sort of, I don't know, what might be considered male-centered videos, right? Like, you're watching sports clips or whatever. It doesn't take you very long for the algorithms to suddenly take you to, like, Andrew Tate or some, like, dating advice guru who tells you that, you know, like, women only only. want one thing or women only want men who are 6666 and also all women are constantly sleeping around and are untrustworthy and you know you can call women voids and whatever all of this stuff um wait what is 666 i'm sorry i know i can't ask of my brain is rotted from researching this um you know this idea that women only date men who are six feet tall make or over make six figures and

have a six-pack or something else. But like all these stereotypes about women that are false, first of all, but make them seem like the enemy who you're sort of always fighting with and have to control and demeaning. And then women on the other side are often getting a lot of advice about, or a lot of conversation, we could say, about how bad the patriarchy is. and how unsafe relationships can be and how many, you know, narcissists there are out there. And so they're like, I don't want to deal with that either. So both of the sexes are sort of in opposition to each other and end up because they're not spending time in person, you know, taking in these stereotypes and avoiding each other even further.

It's not just that they're not spending time together in the real world. It seems the problem is also that online, they're just shadowboxing with caricatures of the other sex, right? It's mostly men talking to other men in their online corner and women talking to other women in their corner. And they're both sort of grappling with, like, cartoon versions in a lot of cases of each other, which, again, just feeds into the cycle of distrust and anxiety. I mean, I just, again, I guess this is a recurring theme. Lots of doom loops here. Lots of doom loops. This is another one, I think.

Yeah, no, I think shadow boxing is like the exact correct term, actually. Like, men are arguing with other men about women who they are not in contact with. Women are talking about men who they're not in contact with. And the, you know, the way that you would correct this, right, is by spending time with an actual woman, if you're a man and being like, oh, is this correct? incorrect. Like, this real woman in the world could tell me something about how women are. But if you're spending all of your time online, and also if, you know, algorithmically, you're pushed into the specific, like, male content or female content funnel, you're, you're not really doing any of that. And, like, I've, it's funny, I've had this experience,

and I see this online, not infrequently, where, you know, some guy posts something about how all women want is X, Y, and Z. And a bunch of women are, like, posting under his X thread. Like, no, actually, as a woman, I can tell you that's not true. And he's like, I don't believe you. Women lie. We know this. It's like, the women are here. But you'd rather listen to, like, fresh and fit tell you about women or something, like some podcast.

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So Salonis provides it. The Salonis context model gives AI operational clarity, so agents know how your unique business runs and how to improve it. Meet the model at CELO-N-R-N-Rae. We're back with a special drop of the gray area and Christine Emba. We've been talking about Gen Z, dating, and relationships. I think that people really do desire love and companionship and like to be in community with other people, to be with someone else.

But doing that is kind of hard, especially if you didn't necessarily learn the skills or have spent a lot of your time isolated. You know, like going out, putting on the right clothes, like figuring out how to talk to girls say, is kind of a slog and you might get rejected a bunch of times and it feels bad. But in the past, you kind of had to do it if you, like, wanted to have sex or like experience some kind of sexual relief. But, you know, for men, I think a... especially. First, you could kind of not do it and find a bunch of guys to whine about your

problems within a forum and give you like an excuse not to do it because like women won't want you anyway, et cetera, et cetera. Or you could just sort of watch porn, which is like not as good as being in a relationship, but, you know, for the moment maybe suffices. It's frictionless. It's easier than doing the real thing. You know, dating gaps have made sort of the asking someone out on a date feel frictionless and can feel like kind of a substitute. Like, well, you know, I tried dating, but I didn't match with anyone. So I guess I'll give up now. Like, I'm not going to pursue this further. I'm worried now about sort of AI and how that's going to play into it in the future as people, you know, enter into sort of emotional entanglements

with these chatbots who will never, you know, tell them that they're wrong. Like, you don't really have to practice relationship skills because like these the boss affirm you and agree with you. Like you don't learn how to how to argue, how to have friction. And then women, I think, I'm very interested in the eyes of Romanticy. What is really kind of like written softcore as a way to sort of engage romantically without putting yourself out there. Or this idealization of a sort of like soft detached life or bedrotting. or whatever, you know, self-optimization and wellness as almost in lieu of forcing yourself out there and the discomfort of other people.

I really do think, Christine, if you ask the aliens on whose supercomputer, I presume, our current simulation is running, if you ask them to build a social environment most likely to destroy the conditions of human connection, I feel like this is the program they would write. Now that I've just said those words out loud, do you think I sound hysterical? I do not think that you sound hysterical. In fact, I agree with you. And I have felt increasingly...

About the aliens or the social conditions? Okay, the aliens did sound a little bit crazy. I'm not going to lie to you there. But the social conditions, like I have become increasingly radicalized not really just the internet, but actually social media, specifically in the interaction styles that it preferences, and increasingly like doesn't even preference. It just forces upon people. You know, as far as the internet goes, I don't know that we were ever meant to have this much information at our fingertips or be in contact with this many people.

And then social media and the way that it, prioritizes and reifies sort of fear, anger, you know, takes you out of the real world, gives you facsimiles of the real world that you can live in. I think it's been bad. I think we made some mistakes, some big mistakes. Well, I mean, look, you know, humans have never been super great with uncertainty, but the internet has just turned ordinary uncertainty into an endless feedback loop of analysis and insecurity. You know, it's like we've all become Dei Stieski characters or something.

But all these pathologies we're talking about. I mean, did they seem genuinely new to you, or maybe just a case of the internet amplifying old anxieties? I think a bit of both is the right way to put it. I mean, the problem of humanity, right? Like, the problem of being mortal has been sort of trying to be seen and understood

by people, trying to find connection and failing feeling alone and trying to make meaning of it, et cetera. Like that, we have all always felt misunderstood and not able to fully understand the world. That's the human condition. But yeah, I think that the internet and social media and dating apps have supercharged specific aspects of that and made them feel even worse. And also given them sort of outsized prominence in our day-to-day lives. You know, like, again, I think it's the human condition to think about the future and perhaps be a little bit worried about what's coming down the pike. That's always the case, right? But today you have that. And then it's like, oh, every second of the day you're going to get a news alert about how some major crisis is happening in some other country. You can't do anything about it. It might be coming for you. You don't know, but you're just going to know about it, you know, or a crisis happening in your country or some bad statistic about how bad dating is. And before, like, you know, you might have anxiety about the future and all those things might be true, but you weren't constantly being bombarded with that fact every second.

Well, it makes you feel anxious and impotent at the same time. Not good. Right. You can't do anything about all of those terrible things. And so having it bombard your brain cannot be good. And again, all these platforms, dating apps or social media, what do they all have in common? Well, probably several things, but certainly one of them is that they monetize insecurity. Yeah.

Basically. And that's all that this comes in it. If you follow all of these things back to like the source, it's insecurity. Yeah. And to me, that's that's the beginning and the end of the thing. They monetize insecurity. And also they are volume plays in different ways. And I think that is, I'm not sure that. that the human psyche has caught up to that. And so that adds to our anxiety. Like if it's news apps, it's sort of receiving all this information that you don't know how to handle. If it's dating apps, it's seeing like the volume of people

who are out there in the world not dating you or who you should be trying to talk to, but you can't. Yeah, I think that's sort of hard for people to handle, but we don't really know how to express that maybe. I find this to be tragic, really. And I have enormous sympathy for Gen Z and younger generations who have been thrown into a world that is so weirdly disconnected and so shaped by shitty institutions with perverse incentive structures. It is no wonder they are the way they are. But they did not come out like this.

The world they inherited made them like this. And that's not their fault. And so I just feel like that's a note on which to end, at least for me. I would echo that too. I think that's actually really important to say. I feel like a lot of people feel like there is something wrong with them. And, yeah, it's not their fault. Like, this culture is bad and has become bad for human connection in ways that we didn't choose.

You know, I am hopeful, though, that in recognizing that the culture is off, that something is off that can give people some motivation or impetus to try and change it. And I think that the first thing that we have to start doing is, and this is a very internety suggestion, just touching grass, just going outside and like trying, perhaps even failing to talk to people by seeking out that in-person connection because everybody wants it. You think that people don't want it, but if you want it, someone else wants it too.

And you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to get it right. You can just try. And that's the first step. That's writer and researcher Christine Embo. This conversation ran in its full form on my podcast, The Gray Area, which you can find wherever you get

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