Gen Z is done with dating apps. More than half of the generation feels burned out often or always while using them, according to a July 2025 Forbes Health survey — the highest rate of any age group. 

One result is less sex and dating. Adults today are having significantly less sex than adults in 1990, according to the Institute for Family Studies, with Gen Z’s sexual activity facing the sharpest decline. Within Gen Z, young women are more likely to experience unwanted behaviors like unsolicited images and contact while using dating apps, which perhaps contributes to their dating burnout and exodus. 

How are Gen Z students at The New School navigating these dynamics? They have experience with a variety of apps: Tinder with its hookup reputation, Bumble — which requires the woman in a heterosexual match to message first — Hinge, which is seen as centering relationships, and more.

Abbie Bross, a 25-year-old first-year student in the New School for Social Research creative writing MFA program, uses Hinge and LoxClub, a “Jew-ish” dating app that users apply to join. “I haven’t had a date yet where I felt like I would never go out on a date with this person again, but I don’t talk to a lot of people on the app,” she said. 

As a Mexican woman dating men, she uses a thorough vetting process when considering matches. “In Mexico, femicide and women being kidnapped is common, so before I meet someone I tell them, ‘Just so you know, my friends and family have my location,’” she said. 

Sharing locations is common among women as a safety measure when dating. Research from the Violence Policy Center shows that women are especially likely to be killed by an intimate partner. Men are harmed by a romantic partner significantly less often. 

Bross said she has high standards for herself on dating apps. Many Gen Z women say the same: Bumble’s 2025 survey shows that 64% of women are refusing to settle for less than they want and need. But even with these high standards, Bross finds the gamification of dating apps overwhelming.

Jana Madern Busquets, a 19-year-old exchange student from Barcelona studying global studies at Lang, agrees. She says swiping is tiring and superficial. “The more I think about it, the more it seems like a market, and you’re shopping, but, like, for a guy. It’s kind of weird,” she said. She also didn’t like that when she was constructing her profile, she was asking herself, “What can I say to make me more attractive to the boys?”

Busquets eventually deleted Hinge. Claudia Vacante, a 20-year-old Lang student, also deleted and redownloaded Hinge for a few months before removing her profile for good. Taking breaks from apps, returning to them, and leaving again can be part of the burnout cycle. The desire for connection keeps people coming back; the fatigue of online posturing drives them away again. 

Although Vacante planned several dates, she always canceled them.“I feel just uncomfortable overall,” she said. “I just feel that I do not know this person at all.” Her discomfort remained regardless of whether she matched with men or women. 

Gen Z men struggle with dating apps, too. Harsh Vatsa, a 29-year-old master’s student in the Strategic Design and Management program at Parsons School of Design, used dating apps — primarily Hinge — for five years before deleting them two years ago. “There was some amount of gamification in this, where you had to create a facade or alter ego of yourself or like the ideal version of it,” he said, referring both to choosing pictures for the app and curating responses to Hinge’s prompts that are intended to showcase users’ personalities. For example, a user might feel pressure to select pictures that display a social life, activities, and travel to appear appealing to others.

After a while, he started to feel “the fatigue of just reintroducing yourself to your matches and the people and like figuring out whether they could be a good match or not.” This burnout prompted him to delete his apps. He feels happy with his decision. “There was no sense of commitment in this space,” he said. “That’s what got purely tiring for me.” One of his goals while he was using the apps was to find companionship, and now he prefers to reach that goal by meeting people in person and building shared experiences. 

Chris Allen, a 20-year-old Parsons student studying fine arts, prefers meeting people in person as well. He dated people of all gender identities on Hinge and Tinder before deleting the apps two months ago. 

Like Busquets, he found swiping to be reductive and felt that people could be very dismissive when they determined that they weren’t interested. “It’s not a very natural, organic way of meeting people,” he said. Still, all his friends are swiping. 

Although most students expressed dating app disillusionment, finding love using apps isn’t a total lost cause. Fiorella Michael, a 22-year-old Parsons student, met her boyfriend three years ago on Tinder. He was the first person she went on a date with, and afterward, she deleted her account. 

With that said, she isn’t oblivious to the dating app struggles. “I probably had a more positive experience than other people. I am aware it’s treacherous out there,” she said. From people sending objectifying messages to lying about their intentions to love bombing or breadcrumbing, dating apps can feel like a minefield.  

Michael used specific filtering methods when sorting through people to protect herself from poor matches. Her red flags included “hey” as a first message, being a “fashion boy” on Instagram, and “art school men who don’t want you to be as cool as they are.” 

Lukewarm dates, safety concerns, constant gamification, and endless introductions all contribute to the feeling that dating apps don’t offer meaningful connections. For these students, the result of meaningless swiping was often burnout in the form of maintaining a profile but not actively swiping, severely limiting time on the apps, or deleting them altogether. 

Still, students haven’t completely sworn off dating yet. Several people remained hopeful about finding relationships in the future, one way or another. 

“I don’t think that there’s one right way,” Allen said. “I think dating is a beautiful thing, but again, you should understand how you’re personally approaching it and if that’s working for you.”