How are young people feeling about dating in 2025?

Modern dating is the pits. Many of us have experienced the perilous conditions within today’s dating pool firsthand or, if you’re safely coupled up, listened to your single friends’ terrifying dispatches from ‘the trenches’. Research also supports the idea that dating is a little trickier to navigate for today’s young singles: young people are having less sex than previous generations; birthrates are falling (with four in ten women who would like children stating that they had not yet done so because they had not found a suitable partner); Gen Z men and women are at loggerheads politically; and people are so socially isolated that loneliness has been declared a global public health concern by the World Health Organisation.

Over the past few years, millions of column inches have been written about why dating is so terrible right now. But as time goes on, questions surrounding the state of modern dating culture only become more urgent. With this in mind, how could young people’s attitudes towards romance and relationships evolve in 2025? Could the new year inject some much-needed optimism into the dating arena?

Some are prioritising being intentional with their time and effort this year. Joe, 28, says he’s entering 2025 with a “fresh mindset”. He explains that he spent last year predominantly using dating apps for “hook-ups”, but that he’s grown “tired of people leaving the morning after, never to be seen again.” This year, he says he’s “overhauling” his approach. “My [dating app] profile has been updated to be more genuine to who I am as a person,” he explains. “I’m actively looking for dates with people I have something in common with, whether that includes music, caring a little too much about movies, or having similar careers.”

Charlotte, 25, says that she’s “come back into the new year with a renewed sense of positivity” towards her love life. “I’m going to try and say yes to more dates, but I’m also going to stop going on second dates when the first date was average and I didn’t feel a spark,” she says. “I’m always like, ‘maybe it’ll grow into something more’, but it never does. I think trusting your gut and following your instinct after that first date is way more useful.” She adds that many of her friends have also agreed to adopt a similar approach.

Unsurprisingly, many are also resolving to move dating offline again. Towards the end of last year Ofcom revealed that the UK’s top four dating apps had seen a dip in use since 2023, with Tinder losing 600,000 users, Bumble 368,000, Hinge 131,000, and Grindr 11,000. Joe says he believes apps have “effectively privatised” dating and romance. “I think Hugh Grant summed it up best when he said that people used to fall in love and have affairs,” he says. “The romance of yesterday sounds so much more exciting and electric. I’m not downplaying how the apps have made a lot of happy, healthy couples, marriages and families, but I now get the impression that going up to someone in a bar is now somehow shameful, or not worth the risk.”

Dr Carolina Bandinelli, associate professor in media and creative industries at the University of Warwick, believes that the apps’ dominance could continue this year. “I think dating apps are here to stay – we are past that moment of initial moral panic that typically accompanies the launch of a new technology,” she says. But, while the apps aren’t going anywhere, Dr Bandinelli suspects that more couples could start meeting offline again. “I think dating in person is starting to feel a little less impossible,” she says, citing the rise of people joining social clubs (such as running clubs, book clubs, or climbing clubs) with the underlying intention to meet a potential partner as evidence of this shift. “This kind of thing isn’t new – in Italy, where I grew up, in the 1990s and 2000s single people would join a tango or salsa class to meet people,” she clarifies. “But I think there has been a renewed interest in creating the social and material infrastructure for an embodied way of dating.”

26-year-old Amelia* says she wants to “meet more people in real life” in 2025. “I want to be more present and learn how to approach people IRL – I don’t think I’ve ever known how to do that,” she says. 26-year-old Ella, who has never used dating apps, is also keen to find a partner in the wild. “I’m open to meeting people if it arises naturally – could be at the gym, at work, in the street, in the club. If I do meet someone and I find them attractive and like their vibe, I’m not going to shy away from hitting on them or approaching them.”

Situationships sting. They’re sometimes magical and you enjoy the time you spend together. But it hurts when it crashes. It really hurts

Ella adds that she’s planning on making it clear that she’s looking for commitment and connection. “I’m going to be quite upfront from the start and say I am monogamous and I’m looking for something serious. I’m not looking for a situationship at all.” Joe is also keen to avoid falling into another dreaded situationship. “Last year I fell head over heels for this one woman. She was perfect to me – I was smitten,” he recalls. “But we never discussed what we were doing. I blinked first, asked if she wanted to go exclusive. Didn’t see her after that.” 

While Gen Z are often assumed to be open to embracing less conventional relationship styles, a lot of recent research claims that young people are keen to revert to more traditional ways of dating. A survey published by Feeld in September 2024 found that monogamy was the “most preferred relationship style” among Gen Z – a contrast to Millennials, whose preference was for ethical non-monogamy. Relatedly, Gen Z was also the generation most likely to report fantasising about monogamy, and the least likely to fantasise about being in an open relationship.

Despite hankering after the steadiness and stability of monogamy, it tracks that Gen Z keep finding themselves in ambiguous and ill-defined situationships given that we’re a particularly risk-averse generation. But it seems as though we’re wising up to the fact that skirting around the awkward “what are we?” question doesn’t eliminate the risk of getting hurt – if anything, it actually ups the likelihood of experiencing misunderstanding and heartbreak. “Situationships sting,” Joe says. “They’re sometimes magical and you enjoy the time you spend together. But it hurts when it crashes. It really hurts.”

Of course, love is all about putting yourself at the mercy of another person – and there’s no foolproof dating strategy which is guaranteed to insulate you from pain (sorry). But it seems as though overall, young people are embracing pragmatism and reclaiming their agency when it comes to dating this year. “Last year I felt quite negative about my dating life,” Charlotte reflects. “It would only take a few bad or average dates for me to be like ‘OK, I can’t do this anymore’. It gets a little scarier towards your late 20s too – I’m definitely feeling the jealousy of seeing some of my friends with their boyfriends in really stable relationships.” But now she feels a lot less worried about her love life. “I’m not like, ‘oh my god, dating in the modern era is hell’. But I’m also not like ‘oh my god, I love going on dates’,” she says. “I just feel quite neutral about it all.” 

*Name has been changed