What Serial Daters and Matchmakers Alike Think We Should Do About Our Dating Crisis

The singles of today’s dating horticulture are not happy.

A vast majority of young people report they’re burned out by app dating, and many are also struggling to date IRL. Even with the bevy of options and tools we have abetted around dating, singles from their 20s to their 40s told me that finding meaningful, long-term relationships is becoming harder than ever.

There’s no one reason, but a culmination of many factors that result in the current perilous state of modern courtship: A loneliness epidemic has been exacerbated by the COVID pandemic, which has led to poor socializing skills, and there’s a surplus of unvetted suitors that the major dating apps like Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble push onto users while hiding their most authentic matches behind a paywall.

Serious intention is also seriously lacking in today’s climate. “Many people are either emotionally unavailable or have commitment issues, or are looking for casual, or really just don’t have the desire to settle down,” Michaela Diehl, a 27-year-old TikTokker who’s posted about her frustrating dating experiences, told me.

But Diehl and several other self-anointed dating experts, including matchmakers, coaches, and licensed relationship counselors, told me they have hope for the future. And it isn’t in the form of run clubs, which have become the tantamount third space for sparking romance. (As a runner, it’s been nice to see more people show up to run, even and especially in the name of love, but it’s also completely shifted the atmosphere. It’s too horny; we’re veering into Coachella frat house vibes, and some of us just want to run.)

If tech companies are minimally willing to put people’s needs over profit, like using smarter A.I. or their swell of data to more mindfully match users—and, simultaneously, if people lean less on tech and do more internal work to become healthier daters—we could cultivate a more curative dating environment where people are more tactfully matched with “the one.”

Most daters and coaches say they want a more bespoke dating-app experience, starting first with more personal questionnaires that get to the heart of who someone is. Alex Barron, 34, a dating and relationship coach based in Austin, told me she does appreciate the new updates from Hinge to encourage people to get on the date and not leave matches in the app to expire. But the most personalized features on the app, like access to your best matches, are paywalled behind a subscription.

“I do like having a max amount of matches you have to respond to, and I do like the idea of having a video call function in the app, because sometimes people don’t want to go on a first date before they get a human connection,” Barron said.

But she noted that apps like Hinge, Tinder, and Bumble aren’t using their data on their users more insightfully—despite the fact that they know “your political beliefs, your religion, height requirements,” and more. These apps can and should ask more questions about our values and “visions for your future.”

Barron and several other dating and relationship experts also imagined that apps could put on in-person events where users could pay to meet all their A.I. and hand-selected matches in one place. A personalized, untelevised Bachelor/Bachelorette experience, if you will. This fantasy dating experience would be curated just for you—or a few select others with similar dating preferences. It would no longer be like shooting fish in a barrel, but pooling from a select group of fish (suitors) where chances of finding a match are much, much higher.

In recent years, dating apps have experimented with hosting in-person events with varying results. Earlier this month, Slate contributor Magdalene Taylor attended a Tinder-hosted meet-up where she detailed the thrill of having men line up to talk to her, but left feeling “a sense of sadness” about it all, “as well as anxiety about how everyone else who had attended was feeling.” It seemed the event was to encourage Tinder users to engage with each other IRL, but the crowd was still a random assortment of personality types, most of whom were not compatible with Taylor.

In a statement to Slate, a Tinder spokesperson said the company is focused on building “meaningful connections,” and that they “don’t build or design our product to maximize time spent on the app.”

“Dating has become more challenging, with high expectations for instant, perfect matches influenced by on-demand services, yet forming meaningful relationships is not as simple as ordering online,” the statement said. “While people today have more dating options than ever, loneliness, especially among young adults post-COVID, remains a significant issue.”

Hinge (which is owned by Tinder’s parent company, Match Group, Inc.) told Slate in a statement that the company is invested in “quality over quantity” matches, and features like the aforementioned Your Turn Limits are “designed to help daters be more intentional about who they are, who they like, and why they like them.”

A Bumble spokesperson added: “We are committed to innovation and creating a more intentional, relevant, and compatible experience.”

Erika Kaplan, the head of PR for high-end matchmaking business Three Day Rule Matchmaking, told me that tech could also help “guide users through their entire dating and relationship journey,” and not just show a buffet of seemingly random options. The company’s clients pay a minimum of $5,900 to help them filter suitors out and guide them through the dating process. Kaplan believes that apps could see better user retention and a worthy subscription model if they offered similar services, even if it wasn’t this white-glove.

“People need support not just in finding matches, but in preparing themselves to be great partners and making more intentional dating decisions,” Kaplan told me. “And it shouldn’t stop there. Daters also need guidance through the early stages of a relationship to build strong, healthy foundations.”

Safety is another issue plaguing daters and dating servicers when it comes to swiping on apps or meeting a stranger in the wild. Apps like Tinder—where anyone can create a profile and your profile is shown to anyone—have faced increasing public pressure to screen profiles better and curb harassment. “There needs to be a better job of doing background checks on dating apps. A lot of people don’t feel safe on these apps,” Anwar White, a Montreal-based dating coach who posts his tips on his popular TikTok channel, told me.

In the company’s statement, Tinder said it has created numerous features to address privacy and safety concerns on its app, “like Photo and Video Selfie Verification, ID Verification,” and “Share My Date,” which allows users to share details about their matches, including their profiles.

But, no matter how much tech can improve the dating experience overall, every person I spoke with for this story stressed the importance of prioritizing being in-person. Finding everlasting partnership still relies heavily on the individual to be intentional and available, and feeling experiences and daters out. There are some factors that can’t be computed by tech and A.I.

“At the end of the day, we are animals; we have senses when we’re in someone’s presence,” Kayla Triviera, a 28-year-old tech worker and part-time TikTokker who’s actively dating in New York City, told me. They added, “It’s such a human experience. You cannot quantify chemistry with someone, it’s either there or it isn’t.”

Noah Kass, a therapist based in New York City, told me that the current dating crisis wasn’t created by big tech companies per se, but he thinks that “they are exploiting people’s insecurities and self-esteem, feeding into an addictive, gamified culture within a capitalist, winner-takes-all society.”

He agrees that making it a safer, more personalized, and guided experience would help relieve a lot of anguish he sees in his clients. “Dating apps need to take into account users’ emotional well-being,” he explained. “The data collected should focus on who users are and what they want, rather than superficial attributes.”

For example, profiles should lead with a user’s relationship values rather than their most standout image. Also, as others suggested, focusing on curating smaller communities or meet-ups “tailored to individual users’ hobbies, interests, values, or relationship goals” within these pools of singles will only encourage authentic exchanges.

“This could provide a more personalized experience and potentially decrease unwanted behaviors such as ghosting or catfishing,” he added.

Mostly, people who don’t have extraneous funds to pay for tailored matchmakers or one-on-one dating coaching want apps to more mindfully use their data to pair them off. Take a quick sweep of dating-related videos on TikTok, and if it’s not daters sharing their horror stories, it’s a myriad of tips to bypass the dating-app paywalls. Most people simply do not have the funds to pay for a premium service, which creates an accessibility issue and class divide. Those who say they have paid for it are also warning people against it.

“Please stop trying to make us pay to find a connection,” Diehl, who has been single and dating since 2020, told me while laughing. “If I have to pay to use the dating app, I simply will not be using it. I think many people would agree with that.”

I’m no mathematician, but in the current climate of frustrated, languishing singles and no standout tech product that’s addressing it, I’m not sure if our future equals healthier dating experiences or more long-term matches. But people do want better.

Now, if only singles who read this article could be matched together. There’s another more meaningful data point for you all.