--- title: Dating Apps Are Dying description: Abundance in online dating makes it harder to become curious about a person, tolerate uncertainty, or feel satisfied with our choice, writes Meehika Barua. canonical: https://time.com/article/2026/09/09/dating-apps-are-dying/ author: Meehika Barua article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-09-09T10:00:04.592Z article:modified_time: 2026-09-09T10:00:04.748Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Dating Apps Are Dying og:description: Abundance in online dating makes it harder to become curious about a person, tolerate uncertainty, or feel satisfied with our choice, writes Meehika Barua. og:url: https://time.com/article/2026/09/09/dating-apps-are-dying/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf201796b1ae19a8d/6aa05bd6eb94cc05adab5266/dating-apps-are-dying.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1902 og:image:height: 1070 og:image:alt: dating-apps-are-dying.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Dating Apps Are Dying twitter:description: Abundance in online dating makes it harder to become curious about a person, tolerate uncertainty, or feel satisfied with our choice, writes Meehika Barua. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf201796b1ae19a8d/6aa05bd6eb94cc05adab5266/dating-apps-are-dying.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  IDEAS Time ideas # Dating Apps Are Dying > Sponsored content. 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Sep 9, 2026 10:00 AM UTC Everyone I know has either deleted dating apps, stopped using them, or is considering it. The icons lie dormant on their phones: technically still there, but rarely opened and no longer expected to deliver anything meaningful. I have used multiple dating apps over the past eight years, and I have never formed a relationship with anyone I met on them. I have rarely even gone on a second date with someone from a dating app. Most first dates end in disappointment, mutual ghosting, or both. My experience is hardly unusual. Social media is full of people declaring that [dating apps are dying](https://www.instagram.com/reels/DcwtNs5RvW0/), and a [2026 Harris Poll](https://theharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Modern-Dating-Survey-February-2026.pdf) found that two-thirds of singles weren’t using them, while 80% of Americans viewed meeting someone in real life as “cute” or “cool.” Over the past year, I have also found myself far more interested in men I meet in real life. Why? My theory is that dating apps are dying because they don’t encourage the patience, curiosity, and emotional investment that dating requires. The apps promise abundance: hundreds or even thousands of potential partners, all accessible from the couch. But that abundance creates its own burden. Every session requires users to make a relentless series of small decisions—whether to swipe, initiate a conversation, maintain it, arrange a date, or keep looking for someone better. There is evidence that this process becomes [emotionally exhausting](https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/love-sex/relationships/a34463436/does-your-dating-app-want-you-to-stay-single/). A longitudinal study led by Liesel Sharabi, director of the [Relationships and Technology Lab](https://www.lieselsharabi.com/) at Arizona State University, followed dating-app users for 12 weeks and found that emotional exhaustion and [feelings of inefficacy](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/383914551%5FBurnt%5Fout%5Fand%5Fstill%5Fsingle%5FSusceptibility%5Fto%5Fdating%5Fapp%5Fburnout%5Fover%5Ftime) increased over time. “From a cognitive perspective, one reason may be the scale of the task,” says Samuel Hipkiss, a postdoctoral researcher in psychology at the University of Bath. Dating apps expose us to far more potential partners than we would encounter offline, requiring hundreds of judgments about people we know almost nothing about. The end result is decision fatigue and cynicism, he explains. Of course, rejection has always been part of dating, but apps dramatically increase our exposure to it. Every unanswered message, vanished match, and unexplained ghosting carries a small emotional cost. Over time, Hipkiss says, users may lose faith in the process and become less willing to invest emotionally in any individual connection. I have felt myself doing exactly that. Two years ago, I met someone on Hinge and went on five dates with him. I kept accepting because I wanted to prove that I was still trying, and because social media had convinced me to believe in the “[slow burn](https://www.instagram.com/reels/DXCc-axjG2U/).” But the sad truth is that the dates continued not because I particularly liked him. They continued because he seemed about 30% better than the other men I had met through the apps. Eventually, he realized that I was not truly interested and ended things with me. Good for him. I wasn’t being honest with him or with myself. I had mistaken the absence of an immediate disaster for the presence of a connection. Dating apps make that mistake easier because they turn a complicated social process into something immediate and measurable. In contrast, offline attraction develops through [ambiguous signals](https://time.com/article/2026/08/13/flirting-is-a-lost-art/): conversation, familiarity, body language, timing, and the gradual accumulation of knowledge about another person. Apps reduce that uncertainty to a series of unmistakable outcomes. Swipe left or right. Match or no match. Message or silence. In other words, they have gamified dating. But falling in love and building a relationship aren’t competitions to be won or algorithms that can be hacked. Philosopher Karim Nader has argued that dating apps transform the complex process of choosing a partner into a sequence of simple, [discrete decisions](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/theo.12549). The goal can quietly shift from forming a relationship to accumulating matches. Matches offer a clear metric of success and an immediate burst of validation, even when neither person intends to begin a conversation. Because they arrive unpredictably, they can operate as intermittent rewards: each disappointing swipe carries the possibility that the next one will produce a match. That uncertainty keeps us returning. But it can also separate the immediate reward of receiving a match from the longer-term goal of forming a relationship. I see this every time I open dating apps. Yesterday, I matched with 12 men. Only two messaged me. The others remain in dating app purgatory, neither rejected nor pursued. When I message matches first, I often receive no response. For many users, it seems, getting the match is enough. The person on the other side becomes secondary to the proof that someone chose them. Despite the exhaustion and cynicism, the game continues. We open the app almost automatically, swipe for a few minutes, and wait for a small reward. The behavior starts to resemble playing Candy Crush more than looking for a partner. Then there is the problem of choice. In one experiment, researchers found that showing users larger sets of dating profiles increased [partner-choice overload](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563221003009) and fear of being single while decreasing self-esteem. Other research suggests that prolonged access to an enormous pool of profiles can produce a [rejection mindset](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335312368%5FA%5FRejection%5FMind-Set%5FChoice%5FOverload%5Fin%5FOnline%5FDating); as users continue swiping, they become increasingly likely to dismiss potential partners. I can reject a profile in less than two seconds because I do not like someone’s hair or because he falls outside my preferred height range. These judgments are shallow, but they are also a predictable response to the task the apps have created. When faced with hundreds of decisions and very little information, we rely on shortcuts. A photograph, a job title, or an awkwardly phrased prompt becomes a proxy for an entire personality. At the same time, the endless supply of profiles lowers the perceived cost of rejecting someone. Why spend time determining whether one imperfect person might be compatible when hundreds of supposedly better options are waiting? That feeling does not necessarily disappear after we choose someone. Even during a promising conversation, or after several dates, the app remains on our phone, offering the possibility of a match who could be funnier, hotter, or more compatible. The next person is always one swipe away. A friend once compared dating apps to shopping for a dress or test-driving a car. You hesitate to choose the first one because another store might have a better price or a more flattering option. Dating apps encourage us to evaluate people as though they are consumer products: quickly, comparatively, and with the assumption that an upgrade may be just around the corner. This is the central paradox of dating apps. Their enormous selection makes us believe that finding the perfect partner should be easier than ever. But the same abundance can make it harder to become curious about a person, tolerate uncertainty, or feel satisfied with our choice. We have become trapped in a game whose rewards often have little to do with its supposed purpose. As such, many of us are beginning to question whether an endless marketplace of faces is the best way to find love. And it’s why so many of us looking for love and connection are breaking up with dating apps. Now, it’s time for us to be brave—and to get back out there. 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