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Why Is Dating So Hard for Millennials and Gen Z?

Why is dating so hard for millennials and Gen Z? More choice, less pressure to settle down and old hurts can make finding someone easier than staying together.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · July 5, 2024

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Glory changed her Hinge location to London. Australia might be next. She said she wanted a meaningful relationship, yet moving her profile across oceans felt more fun than another short chat on a screen.

That small joke gets at why dating is so hard for millennials and Gen Z. Apps offer more people to meet, while giving each person less reason to linger. Young adults also have more room to decide when, or whether, to commit. Add old hurts and different ideas about what a relationship should be, and two people can like each other without knowing what happens next.

On Squeam-ish, Glory asks five guests in their early 20s to talk through that problem. Their answers don't line up. In the episode “Dating as a Millennial /Gen-Z,” they rarely match, which is useful: a generation can share an app without sharing a plan.

Why is dating so hard for millennials and Gen Z?

Clevon Cunningham Jr. had a theory. Everyone who knows what they want, he said, is already taken. Ymara Magliore immediately asked why he had not been taken in college. Clevon Cunningham Jr. gave her a brisk answer: “Because I was a shit show in college.”

The exchange is funny because it catches a familiar mistake. It is easy to treat other single people as unfinished while granting yourself time to grow. Clevon Cunningham Jr. later narrowed his point to his own life as a Black gay man dating in New York. Kevin Barbour, also a Black gay man in his mid-20s, disagreed with him. Kevin Barbour said college had helped him learn what he liked, and he mostly knew what he wanted.

They also described opposite kinds of pressure. Clevon Cunningham Jr. said he felt conspicuously single when he went out with several couples. Brandon Jackson said seeing friends in relationships could make getting older feel lonely. Melanie Morales, at 21, described a shift toward casual dating among people at college. Her first serious relationship had carried pressure to work out; afterward, she saw a breakup as something she could live through.

The national picture needs care. In a Pew Research Center survey published in 2023, 57% of single U.S. adults said they were not looking for dates or a relationship. Some enjoyed being single or had other priorities. That figure covers adults of all ages, though, and says nothing about whether these guests will find partners. It does show why a person looking for commitment may meet plenty of people who are looking for something else.

Do dating apps make it harder to choose?

Glory said a match could produce a few sentences, a pause, another few sentences and then silence. Even a voice note could send her swiping away. In college, she said, people met in shared spaces and got more than a profile to go on. The screen felt cold to her.

Ymara Magliore saw another trap: with enough profiles, someone can keep adjusting their idea of a perfect partner and expect an app to find that person. Glory compared it to the long wish lists on Indian Matchmaking. What starts as knowing your needs can become a search for someone with a particular height and a particular set of hands.

There is some evidence behind their worry. In a 2023 Pew survey, 37% of U.S. adults said dating apps offered too many choices; 43% thought the number was about right. A study of 84 speed-dating events found that people made fewer offers when the pool of dates was more varied, especially when it was large. A busy dating app is different from a speed-dating room, so the study cannot explain every abandoned chat. It does suggest that more choice does not always make choosing easy.

The guests would not agree that apps are only a problem. Melanie Morales said she had been on app dates, though she met her last boyfriend at school. She also knew a friend who had met her girlfriend on Tinder and had been with her for almost two years. An unidentified guest said apps had helped them meet queer friends they might never have found otherwise.

That benefit shows up in Pew's figures too. Among partnered adults ages 18 to 29, one in five had met their current partner online. Among partnered lesbian, gay and bisexual adults, 24% had done so. The app can open a door. It cannot tell two people what to do once they walk through it.

Why does commitment feel different now?

Melanie Morales thought commitment used to be an expected part of dating. College was different. Among her college peers, she said, people often wanted to keep things casual. Ymara Magliore remembered going on dates for fun in college, without expecting every pleasant evening to become a relationship. Kevin Barbour thought having more ways to meet people made it easier to keep looking.

Those are their experiences, not proof that earlier generations chose better partners. The old timetable has changed, though. U.S. Census Bureau estimates put the median age at first marriage in 2025 at 30.8 for men and 28.4 for women. In 1975, it was 23.5 and 21.1. A later wedding can leave more years for dating, work and decisions that have little to do with an app.

Ymara Magliore raised the cost of the older script. She could not see how someone in their mid-20s was meant to marry, buy a house and start a family within a few years when housing cost so much. The Census Bureau reported that 58% of adults ages 18 to 24 lived in their parental home in 2025. Living with family does not stop romance. It can change what “settling down” would take.

“I'm learning more about myself in relationship as I go along too.”
— Ymara Magliore, on Squeam-ish

Glory had her own mismatch between an old script and real life. She said dating was discouraged as she grew up in a Nigerian household, yet marriage was still the goal. How was she supposed to meet a husband without talking to men? Years later, she was on Hinge, hoping to meet someone while still working out how to begin.

Are dating standards too high?

Melanie Morales told the group about a friend who once ruled out dating anyone younger, long-distance or in the military. The friend then began dating someone who met every one of those descriptions. Kevin Barbour laughed at the overlap: he was seeing someone long-distance in the military, despite thinking he would never do either.

Neither story means people should throw out their standards. It means a rule written before meeting someone may turn out to be less vital than it sounded. Brandon Jackson, who said he knew what he wanted and did not feel eager to compromise, asked where a useful list becomes an impossible one. That is a fair question. Nobody in the room had a number that settled it.

Ymara Magliore found out some of her own answers after she started dating her boyfriend. Early on, she wanted someone smart and funny who could trade jokes with her. After two years, she was thinking about dishes when one person cooked. A profile can tell you whether someone seems funny. It cannot show who clears the sink on a Tuesday.

That is where a standard earns its place. Melanie Morales wanted genuine care between partners; Ymara Magliore wanted room to disagree and work things out. Those needs ask more of a person than a perfect profile does. They also take longer to see.

Can past relationships make commitment harder?

Melanie Morales described a former partner whose past pain, as she understood it, had worn down his sense of worth. She felt that the trouble between them was not simply a poor match. She also could not do the work for him. When Brandon Jackson put words to the urge to save someone, Melanie Morales agreed that sometimes you have to let them go.

That is one person's account of a breakup. It cannot tell us what her former partner felt or why the relationship ended. It does show how confusing dating can be when affection is there and one person still cannot offer what the other needs.

Glory said she valued the fact that people her age could talk openly about healing. That mattered to her. Brandon Jackson said feeling comfortable with himself mattered to him as a Black queer man. He gave a concrete example: someone might say they want to date, then be unwilling to hold hands in public, putting a hard limit on the closeness a partner can expect.

Ymara Magliore made an equally direct point about responsibility. A person can bring pain into a relationship, she said, but it remains their work to face it. A partner can listen. That partner should not have to guess forever which part of an argument belongs to the present and which part came from before they met.

What helps people build a lasting relationship?

Brandon Jackson said he had moved from hookups toward wanting someone who would go out with him and talk beyond a string of texts. Glory wanted to be friends first. They were asking for time together that revealed more than whether two people looked good to each other on a phone.

Being clear about that wish helps. The unidentified guest said some app users state plainly that they want sex, while others say they want dates. People may still change their minds. Even so, saying what you hope for gives the other person a chance to say whether they are there for the same reason.

The harder part may come after two people choose each other. Ymara Magliore said she had tested her boyfriend early in their relationship by being mean to see whether he would stay. She called that behavior toxic and warned against copying it. Later, she became more willing to show care in small ways, including paying for a date or buying something he needed.

Brandon Jackson pushed back on the idea of waiting until a partner has proved themselves for a set length of time before showing any care. He thought there was room to do something kind while still getting to know someone. Neither guest argued for ignoring a bad pattern. Their disagreement was about how to stay open without asking another person to pass a test they do not know they are taking.

For a longer listen, the Squeam-ish episode lets those disagreements play out. No one produces a flawless dating rule. Ymara Magliore gets closer to a useful picture when she recalls what living with a choice brought up: one person cooks, and somebody has to do the dishes.

The full episode of Squeam-ish is on Underdog Podcasts, with the rest of the network's shows.