Everyone I know has either deleted dating apps, stopped using them, or is considering it. The icons lie dormant on their phones: technically still there, but rarely opened and no longer expected to deliver anything meaningful.

I have used multiple dating apps over the past eight years, and I have never formed a relationship with anyone I met on them. I have rarely even gone on a second date with someone from a dating app. Most first dates end in disappointment, mutual ghosting, or both. 

My experience is hardly unusual. Social media is full of people declaring that dating apps are dying, and a 2026 Harris Poll found that two-thirds of singles weren’t using them, while 80% of Americans viewed meeting someone in real life as “cute” or “cool.”

Over the past year, I have also found myself far more interested in men I meet in real life. Why? My theory is that dating apps are dying because they don’t encourage the patience, curiosity, and emotional investment that dating requires.

The apps promise abundance: hundreds or even thousands of potential partners, all accessible from the couch. But that abundance creates its own burden. Every session requires users to make a relentless series of small decisions—whether to swipe, initiate a conversation, maintain it, arrange a date, or keep looking for someone better.

There is evidence that this process becomes emotionally exhausting. A longitudinal study led by Liesel Sharabi, director of the Relationships and Technology Lab at Arizona State University, followed dating-app users for 12 weeks and found that emotional exhaustion and feelings of inefficacy increased over time.

“From a cognitive perspective, one reason may be the scale of the task,” says Samuel Hipkiss, a postdoctoral researcher in psychology at the University of Bath. Dating apps........

© Time