The short version: Gen Z isn’t dating less because it doesn’t want to. Only 31% of unmarried 22-to-35-year-olds are “active daters” who date monthly or more, 57% of single adults say they’re not currently looking, and Gen Z entered adulthood with meaningfully less relationship experience than the generations before it — but 61% still expect to marry eventually, and the decline in interest since 2019 is concentrated almost entirely among men. This is a recession in dating activity and confidence, not in the desire for a relationship.
- Just 31% Institute for Family Studies, Feb 2026 of unmarried adults 22-35 date monthly or more; the rest date rarely or not at all.
- 57% Pew Research Center, Feb 2023 of single U.S. adults say they’re not currently looking for a relationship or casual dates — a record high, down from 49% searching in 2019 Pew Research Center, Feb 2023 to 42% searching in 2022 Pew Research Center, Feb 2023.
- Only 56% Survey Center on American Life, Feb 2024 of Gen Z had a romantic relationship as a teenager, versus 78% Survey Center on American Life, Feb 2024 of Baby Boomers at the same age.
The 2026 dating recession, by the numbers
The Institute for Family Studies gave this trend a name in February 2026: the “dating recession.” Its 2025 National Dating Landscape Survey polled 5,275 unmarried adults ages 22 to 35 — spanning the oldest half of Gen Z and the youngest Millennials — and found that just 30% Institute for Family Studies, Feb 2026 are currently dating at all, casually or exclusively. Asked how often they date, only 31% Institute for Family Studies, Feb 2026 qualify as “active daters” who go on a date once a month or more. The rest overwhelmingly don’t: most respondents reported dating rarely or not once in the past year.
The gap by gender is real and runs the opposite direction from how this trend usually gets described. Coverage of the “dating recession” tends to frame it as men checking out. IFS’s own activity numbers say otherwise: women report dating even less often than men do.
| Active daters (monthly+) | Rarely or never dated, past year | |
|---|---|---|
| Women | 26% | 74% |
| Men | 36% | 64% |
| Overall | 31% | — |
Why Gen Z isn't dating
IFS also asked non-daters directly what’s stopping them. The single biggest reason, cited by 52% Institute for Family Studies, Feb 2026 of respondents, is money — and it skews notably male (58% Institute for Family Studies, Feb 2026 of men vs. 46% Institute for Family Studies, Feb 2026 of women), consistent with the persistent cultural expectation that men initiate and pay for dates. Confidence is close behind at 49% Institute for Family Studies, Feb 2026, and nearly half (48% Institute for Family Studies, Feb 2026) point to bad past experiences souring them on trying again.
| Barrier | Share citing it |
|---|---|
| Not enough money | 52% |
| Lack of confidence | 49% |
| Bad past experiences | 48% |
| Not enough relationship experience | 38% |
| Fear of a serious relationship | 34% |
| Fear of commitment specifically | 18% |
That last row matters: fear of commitment itself — the popular explanation for why young people supposedly won’t settle down — is the least-cited barrier on the list, well behind practical and experiential reasons. The same survey found the aftermath of past relationships compounds this: 55% say a past breakup made them more reluctant to date again Institute for Family Studies, Feb 2026, and 45% Institute for Family Studies, Feb 2026 say they’ve passed up a real opportunity because of a prior bad experience. A smaller but notable share — 36% Institute for Family Studies, Feb 2026 — admit they sometimes end relationships too quickly specifically to avoid getting hurt again, a pattern that turns one bad experience into a habit of pre-emptively avoiding a second one.
What 'not enough money' actually means
IFS’s survey asked people to name a barrier; it didn’t have to explain what “not enough money” means in dollar terms. The Dating Gazette’s own dataset, built from MIT Living Wage Calculator estimates for the specific counties behind each of the 124 metros we track, can. Across those metros, the single-adult living wage — the income needed to cover necessities alone, before a single discretionary dollar goes toward a date — averages $49,294 a year The Dating Gazette. It ranges from $37,502 a year in Amarillo The Dating Gazette to $79,477 a year in New York The Dating Gazette. In the most expensive markets we track, “not enough money” can mean not having cleared basic necessities yet, well before dating enters the budget at all — which reframes IFS’s 52% not as a vague excuse but as a real, geography-dependent constraint.
A generation that grew up without dating
The dating recession didn’t start at 22. The Survey Center on American Life, a project of the American Enterprise Institute, found in a February 2024 analysis that only 56% Survey Center on American Life, Feb 2024 of Gen Z adults say they were ever in a romantic relationship as a teenager — compared with 78% Survey Center on American Life, Feb 2024 of Baby Boomers and 76% Survey Center on American Life, Feb 2024 of Gen Xers asked the same question about their own teen years.
| Generation | Had a teen relationship |
|---|---|
| Baby Boomers | 78% |
| Generation X | 76% |
| Generation Z | 56% |
The gap is not evenly split by gender. Among Gen Z, 54% Survey Center on American Life, Feb 2024 of men report teen relationship experience, but 44% of Gen Z men report having none at all Survey Center on American Life, Feb 2024 — double the rate of older generations of men, per the Center’s analysis. That single statistic is the closest thing to a root cause behind a lot of what shows up later in the IFS numbers above: a generation that spent its teenage years, disproportionately among men, without the low-stakes practice of an actual relationship is arriving at adulthood with less of what IFS’s survey separately measured as dating confidence.
Single, and not particularly looking
It isn’t just that Gen Z is dating less — a majority of single adults say they’re not trying to, and that gap is widest at exactly the age this generation is at. Pew Research Center’s February 2023 survey found that overall, 30% Pew Research Center, Feb 2023 of U.S. adults are single, but that share nearly doubles among the young: 47% Pew Research Center, Feb 2023 of adults under 30 are single, against just 21% Pew Research Center, Feb 2023 of those 30 to 49.
Singlehood under 30 also isn’t split evenly by gender — not close. 63% of men under 30 are single Pew Research Center, Feb 2023, compared with only 34% of women under 30 Pew Research Center, Feb 2023. That’s not a rounding difference; it means partnered young women are, by definition, mostly paired with men outside that under-30 bracket, and it leaves a large pool of single young men that the available pool of single young women can’t match one-to-one within the same age band.
| Group | Share single | Share of singles actively searching |
|---|---|---|
| Adults under 30 | 47% | 57% (unpartnered adults under 50, combined) |
| Men under 30 | 63% | 50% (single men, all ages) |
| Women under 30 | 34% | 35% (single women, all ages) |
| Adults 30-49 | 21% | — |
Pew’s overall figure — 57% Pew Research Center, Feb 2023 of single adults not currently looking for a relationship or casual dates — breaks down further among the 42% who are searching Pew Research Center, Feb 2023: 22% are open to either something committed or something casual, 13% want a committed relationship specifically, and 7% are looking only for something casual. And this isn’t a static number. Interest in dating has genuinely fallen since before the pandemic: the share of single Americans actively searching dropped from 49% in 2019 Pew Research Center, Feb 2023 to 42% by mid-2022 Pew Research Center, Feb 2023, and that entire decline is close to a one-gender story: single men’s search rate fell 11 points, from 61% Pew Research Center, Feb 2023 to 50% Pew Research Center, Feb 2023, while single women’s barely moved, from 38% Pew Research Center, Feb 2023 to 35% Pew Research Center, Feb 2023.
The gender gap behind the recession
Line these four data points up and a consistent shape emerges across every source in this article, independently measured, on different surveys, in different years:
| What was measured | Men | Women | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single, under 30 | 63% | 34% | Pew, 2023 |
| Had a teen relationship (Gen Z) | 54% | 58% (all Gen Z: 56%) | AEI, 2024 |
| Active dater, unmarried 22-35 | 36% | 26% | IFS, 2026 |
| Search rate decline, 2019→2022 | −11 pts | −3 pts | Pew, 2023 |
Men are more likely to be single under 30, yet also more likely to be actively dating once they’re in the 22-35 bracket — the two aren’t contradictory, since a large pool of single men can coexist with a higher per-man dating rate if that pool is dating a smaller number of women more intensely, or if a meaningful share of those single men simply aren’t dating at all while a smaller, more active subset accounts for most of the male dating activity IFS measured. What the data does say cleanly is that the decline since 2019 — the actual “recession” part of the dating recession — is a story about men far more than it is about women, both in interest (the 11-point Pew drop) and in formative experience (the AEI teen-relationship gap, concentrated in the “zero experience” category specifically among Gen Z men).
The dating app paradox
Given how little of the above points toward apps as a fix, it’s worth noting Gen Z is still the heaviest user of them. Pew’s February 2023 online dating report found 53% Pew Research Center, Feb 2023 of U.S. adults under 30 have ever used a dating site or app — the highest rate of any age group Pew tracks, and close to the 45% Pew Research Center, Feb 2023 of single, actively-searching adults overall who’ve used one in just the past year (rising to 53% among under-50 searchers specifically Pew Research Center, Feb 2023). Tinder specifically dominates the youngest bracket: among under-30 online daters, 79% Pew Research Center, Feb 2023 have used it, compared with just 44% Pew Research Center, Feb 2023 of daters ages 30 to 49.
| Metric | Share |
|---|---|
| Ever used any dating site/app | 53% |
| Have used Tinder | 42% |
| Have used Bumble | 27% |
| Have used Hinge | 21% |
| Used Tinder, among under-30 online daters specifically | 79% |
Put the two data sets side by side and the picture isn’t contradictory so much as it’s honest: apps are where Gen Z looks, not necessarily where it succeeds. High trial rates and a 52%-of-non-daters-cite-money, 49%-cite-confidence reality can both be true of the same generation at the same time — opening an app costs nothing and requires no confidence; a date does both.
What Gen Z still wants from love
None of this reads as a generation that has given up on relationships. Asked what they’re actually looking for when they do date, IFS’s respondents ranked emotional connection and a serious relationship above everything else — for both genders, though women rank both slightly higher than men do. Fewer respondents said they were dating just to explore their options (69% Institute for Family Studies, Feb 2026) or to learn what they want in a future partner (63% Institute for Family Studies, Feb 2026), which is worth reading as: even the “lighter” stated reasons for dating still ranked below two-thirds endorsement.
The ordering matters as much as the numbers. If casual exploration or low-stakes learning were the real draw, those two purposes would plausibly rank near the top, not near the bottom of a five-purpose list. Instead, the two purposes that most directly describe wanting a real, ongoing relationship — emotional connection and forming something serious — are the ones with the highest endorsement, for both women and men, in every breakdown IFS reported. That pattern holds even though this is the same survey that found only 31% of respondents dating monthly or more and 52% citing money as a barrier: the people IFS surveyed are not short on what they want from a relationship, they are short on the confidence, money, and practice needed to go get it. Those are solvable, practical constraints, not a generational shift away from wanting connection in the first place.
| Goal | Women | Men |
|---|---|---|
| Emotional connection | 83% | 76% |
| Forming a serious relationship | 83% | 74% |
And on the biggest question of all — marriage — 61% Institute for Family Studies, Feb 2026 of unmarried young adults say they definitely expect to marry someday, against just 14% Institute for Family Studies, Feb 2026 who don’t expect to and 25% Institute for Family Studies, Feb 2026 who are genuinely unsure. They’re simply expecting it later: IFS found a median expected marriage age of 33 for women Institute for Family Studies, Feb 2026 and 35 for men Institute for Family Studies, Feb 2026 — and, notably, that expected horizon to marriage holds steady at five to six years out regardless of a respondent’s current age, meaning younger and older unmarried adults alike keep pushing the expectation further out rather than closing the gap as they age.
How these four surveys fit together
None of the four sources cited above surveyed “Gen Z” using an identical definition, and this piece doesn’t pretend otherwise. The Institute for Family Studies’ 2025 National Dating Landscape Survey (published February 2026) sampled 5,275 unmarried adults ages 22 to 35 — a range that spans the older half of Gen Z and the younger half of the Millennial generation, not Gen Z alone. The Survey Center on American Life’s February 2024 analysis explicitly studies Gen Z as a defined generational cohort. Pew Research Center’s two February 2023 releases — one on single Americans generally, one specifically on online dating — both use an “18 to 29” age bucket as their youngest-adult category, which in 2023 captured Gen Z plus the very youngest Millennials; that survey was fielded July 5–17, 2022, among 6,034 U.S. adults with a margin of error of about 2.0 percentage points. Where this article says “Gen Z,” it means the source itself framed the finding that way; where a source used a broader young-adult bracket instead, the text says so and gives the real age range rather than relabeling it.
The bottom line
Read together, these surveys tell a coherent story rather than a handful of disconnected headlines. Gen Z had less relationship experience as teenagers than any recent generation, especially the men. That shows up in adulthood as a stated lack of confidence and a wariness of past bad experiences, which rank alongside money as the biggest cited barriers to dating more. Meanwhile, a majority of single adults say they’re not even in the market right now, and interest in searching has genuinely fallen since 2019 — a decline concentrated almost entirely among men. But the ones who are still dating overwhelmingly want a real, emotionally connected relationship, and most still expect to marry, just later than previous generations did. The recession is in activity, confidence, and formative experience — not in what Gen Z actually wants.
That distinction is easy to lose in coverage of this topic, because “dating recession” and “romance gap” are the kind of headline-ready phrases that invite a simpler, more cynical read: a generation giving up on love. The actual survey data does not support that read. Every barrier IFS asked about, money, confidence, bad past experiences, is the kind of thing that can change with time, income, and practice, not evidence of a permanent shift in what people want from a relationship. And the same generation reporting record-low active-dating rates is also the one still ranking emotional connection and a serious relationship above every more casual reason to date at all. Read the numbers in order, rather than as isolated headlines, and the story is less “Gen Z doesn’t want love” and more “Gen Z wants it and is running into real, nameable obstacles on the way there.”
For a full look at how partnered and coupled Gen Z and Millennial adults actually are today, city by city, see The State of Dating in America, 2026, which aggregates The Dating Gazette’s own 124-metro dataset alongside Census, Pew, and Gallup figures. For the language this generation uses to talk about all of it, see the modern dating glossary, or run your own numbers against the national data with the dating statistics calculator.