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Dating app burnout is common, and a mismatch between our evolved minds and endless choice may help explain it.

When people see many partners, they become more rejecting and lean on traits they can judge immediately.

A profile cannot predict chemistry, which tends to be clear only once people meet.

Have you ever closed a dating app feeling more tired than when you opened it? If you have, you are in good company. In 2024, a survey of 1,000 Americans who used a dating app in the past year found that 78% said they sometimes, often, or always felt emotionally, mentally, or physically exhausted by the apps. Research supports this finding. A study of dating app users by Sharabi and colleagues (2026) found that emotional exhaustion increased over time, as did inefficacy, the sense that one’s efforts are not paying off. Users who self-reported higher levels of depression, anxiety, or loneliness were more prone to both.

The industry is under strain, too. Earlier this month, Bumble agreed to be acquired by Ithaca Holdings for $1.3 billion, far below the roughly $14 billion valuation it carried when it went public in 2021. The number of paying users has declined dramatically; in spring 2026, it had about 16% fewer paying users than a year earlier.

As an evolutionary psychologist, I find this exhaustion intriguing, and I think it stems from mismatch. The term mismatch refers to what happens when psychological mechanisms that evolved in one environment meet inputs far more numerous or intense than those our ancestors are hypothesized to have encountered. These mismatches can result in behavior that no longer serves us well (Li et al., 2018). While I cannot say with total certainty what our ancestral courtship involved, I am confident that it did not entail reviewing hundreds of strangers’ photographs in a single evening in the hopes of finding a mate.

This mismatch between human nature and dating apps explains four reasons dating may feel exhausting.

1. More options make us pickier

In 2004, psychologist Barry Schwartz popularized the idea of a paradox of choice: that having more........

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