The Dating Crisis in the Modern World
- Brainz Magazine
- 3 hours ago
- 6 min read
Written by Dylan Heidt, Recovery Coach
Dylan Heidt is a board-certified Recovery Specialist with a unique ability to draw from a wide pallet of extensive lived experience. A deep understanding of others enables him to connect with clients on a profound level, fostering meaningful growth and transformative change in the lives of everyone that he serves.
Dating in America has always reflected the broader cultural moment. In the 1950s, courtship was a ritual tethered to family, faith, and long-term commitment. In the ’70s and ’80s, it became more expressive, freer, shaped by feminism, individualism, and changing sexual norms. But over the last two decades, something fundamentally different has taken hold: dating has become fragmented, transactional, and, increasingly, disposable.
Today, a growing number of Americans, especially the young, are not just struggling to find lasting relationships. Many have stopped looking altogether.
The app trap
At first glance, dating apps seem like a useful adaptation to modern life. Platforms like Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge offer the promise of connection in a world that often feels isolated and disjointed. But under their user-friendly surfaces, these apps have gamified intimacy. A swipe, a match, a like, these now function as emotional slot machines, where rewards are intermittent and ultimately hollow. The pursuit becomes not love, but attention. Validation, not vulnerability.
This shift has introduced what psychologists call choice overload. With endless profiles and the illusion of infinite options, decision-making becomes paralyzing. Many users fall into a state of perpetual evaluation, never fully investing in any one person. Why commit when another option is just a swipe away?
The result is not just a breakdown of traditional relationship models, but a deep erosion of how people approach one another: not as potential partners, but as products to be judged, compared, and often discarded.
The rise of backup partners and the decline of intimacy
One of the more disquieting developments in contemporary dating is the normalization of what might be called “relationship contingency planning.” Many daters maintain a roster of multiple, concurrent romantic or sexual connections, kept active in case their primary option falls through. It is no longer unusual to date with one foot out the door, prepared to pivot at the first sign of discomfort or emotional labor.
This attitude reinforces a broader disposability in dating. People become replaceable not because they lack value, but because the culture no longer incentivizes staying. When the dating economy functions like a marketplace, the temptation is always to browse, to seek out the better deal, the next best thing.
Intimacy, in this landscape, becomes harder to build. Real closeness is forged not through novelty, but through repetition, shared experience, and time. Those things are increasingly rare.
Where are the men?
Perhaps the most revealing trend in all of this is not what’s happening within the dating scene, but what’s happening outside of it: a growing number of young men are simply opting out.
A 2023 Pew Research study found that 63% of men aged 18 to 29 reported being single, nearly double the number of women in the same demographic. And more tellingly, a large portion of those men weren’t just single. They were not dating, not seeking dates, and not sure how to start.
Some of this can be attributed to economic dislocation or social anxiety, but the deeper causes are cultural and psychological. Many young men report feeling unsure of how to approach women in a climate of shifting social expectations. In a world where missteps can be publicly condemned and norms around masculinity are rapidly evolving, initiating romantic interest can feel fraught or even risky.
This anxiety is compounded by a lack of clear models. Fewer boys are growing up with engaged fathers. Media representations of masculinity are often polarized, either toxic or hapless. And with the bulk of romantic interaction happening online, many men simply haven’t had to develop the social confidence required for real-life engagement.
There’s also a growing sense of futility. On dating apps, men face extremely low match rates, some studies suggest less than 10% of swipes result in a match. Over time, repeated rejection breeds disengagement. Better, perhaps, to retreat into digital solitude than risk further disappointment.
But this retreat has costs. Isolation and loneliness are rising sharply among men. Some turn inward, others lash out, and many simply drift, unattached, unmentored, and increasingly disconnected from the possibility of love.
The illusion of the ideal man in dating
At the same time that many men are stepping away from dating, a parallel trend is unfolding: many women are raising the bar so high for potential partners that few men are even considered viable candidates.
This isn’t a moral failing, it's a cultural one. From childhood onward, many women are socialized to see relationships not only through the lens of emotion, but through the lens of upward mobility. A partner is not just someone to love, but someone who represents security, status, and alignment with an imagined ideal. He should be tall, fit, emotionally intelligent, well-dressed, well-traveled, ambitious but not arrogant, financially successful, family-oriented, progressive but traditionally masculine. If he doesn’t meet this checklist, or even one key criterion, like income or social class, he may not even get a response, let alone a second date.
Dating apps accelerate this selectivity. With endless profiles to browse, many women develop a filtering system that eliminates candidates within seconds based on superficial markers: height, job title, zip code. On a platform designed for efficiency, nuance is often lost.
Ironically, while women have more options than ever before, they’re dating from a smaller pool than ever. Many are reluctant to “settle,” not because they’re superficial, but because culture, media, and peer groups increasingly equate settling with failure. “Never lower your standards” has become a kind of mantra, even as loneliness grows.
This has created a quiet resentment on both sides: women feel men aren’t measuring up, while men feel they’re being measured against an impossible standard. In reality, most people are looking for connection, but too often, they’re talking past one another in a language shaped by algorithms and cultural scripts that reward perfection over presence.
A culture without commitment
The cumulative effect of all this is not just a generation of singles, but a culture that is struggling to form and maintain romantic bonds. Commitment, once seen as the natural endpoint of dating, now feels increasingly distant.
Instead, we see a rise in “situationships,” in ambiguous connections that resist definition. We see the mainstreaming of “micro-cheating,” small acts of digital infidelity, and a shift away from monogamy as a default. Emotional detachment has become a survival mechanism. The more uncertain people are about each other’s intentions, the less vulnerable they are willing to be.
This is not a purely personal problem. It is a societal one.
Stable relationships are not just emotionally fulfilling, they are foundational. Marriage and long-term partnership offer not only companionship but a framework for family, community, and civic participation. They support mental health, economic resilience, and even physical well-being. A culture that fails to support healthy romantic connections is one that risks widespread alienation.
The way back
It’s tempting to view all of this as inevitable, the natural outcome of technology, modern life, and cultural evolution. But that ignores a crucial truth: this isn’t a passive process. Dating culture is something we shape, consciously or not, through the choices we make, the norms we reinforce, and the platforms we use.
Rebuilding intimacy in America will require more than nostalgia. It will take structural, educational, and interpersonal change.
We need to teach young people how to date again. Not just what not to do, but how to communicate, ask questions, listen, and show up imperfectly, but authentically.
We need to reintroduce vulnerability as a strength. Commitment is not weakness, and emotional honesty is not naïveté.
We need to rethink technology. Dating apps, for all their convenience, are not neutral tools. They shape behavior. Designers and users alike need to reckon with the emotional economy they create.
We need to normalize imperfect love. Real relationships aren’t curated. They’re messy, and that’s what makes them worth building.
And we need to talk more openly about loneliness, not as a pathology, but as a shared human experience, one that should push us toward connection rather than performance.
None of this is easy. But the alternative, a society of drifting individuals, unable or unwilling to love each other, is harder still.
Read more from Dylan Heidt
Dylan Heidt, Recovery Coach
Dylan Heidt, formerly a thriving entrepreneur within the world of music, now spends the majority of his time helping his clients transform their lives via a holistic approach to long-term wellness and sustained recovery. A firm believer in maintaining total alignment of the mind, body, and spirit, Heidt strives to open doors and create new pathways for his clients, actively reshaping and restructuring the way in which they tend to think about the mind, body, and spirit as three seemingly separate entities, instead of one unified field of energy.
