Why the Young and the Single Just Can’t Commit to Dating Apps

Alexa Valavicius is 28, single and off dating apps since 2021. How come?

She quit Hinge and Bumble, the only two platforms she was on, when she realized that getting a good read on people was difficult based on their profiles.

“I’m someone who is very attracted to someone’s energy, and it’s very hard to gauge that in an app,” Ms. Valavicius, a seventh-grade teacher who lives in Chicago, said in an interview.

Although she has never been in a relationship, she doesn’t believe she’s going to meet the love of her life via a screen: “I feel like my ideal partner is someone who is not spending their free time on apps.”

Among young singles today, dating-app fatigue is real. The popularity of in-person dating events and the eagerness of some users to take a sabbatical from swiping both point to a shift among members of Gen Z. And that weariness is being felt by the largest dating-app companies, Match Group and Bumble, both of which have reported poor revenue growth and have laid off workers.

One main reason? They’re struggling to connect with younger daters.

On TikTok, Reddit and Instagram, young people don’t hold back about the reasons they have had it with dating platforms: Swiping is starting to feel too transactional and unnatural. They distrust the dating-app companies and are sick of fake profiles. They’re not interested in hookup culture. Other social platforms are better for meeting people — often organically and at no cost.

Deja Chanel, 25, said she had been using dating apps, mostly Hinge, since 2021. Because she is a full-time content creator and spends most of the day working from her Nashville home, she said, it was difficult to meet people in real life. She deleted the app for good in January.