Never in history have single people had access to so many potential romantic partners. A generation ago, most Americans met people through the ordinary institutions of life. They met in person at college or church or were introduced in a coffee shop or bar. Today, a single person can open an app and, within minutes, encounter more potential dates than either set of grandparents would have in their lifetimes.
Dating apps took off as marriage was already becoming less common. Many thought that such optionality would make finding a husband or wife easier, but instead, marriage became rarer. The annual marriage rate has fallen 31% since 2000. It’s dropped 65% since 1970.
The apps did not cause that collapse, but we should ask whether technology designed to make finding someone easier may also be creating habits that actually make it harder.
To understand the problem, we should start with the business model. A dating app succeeds when people keep using it. A marriage succeeds when two people hopefully never need the app again. Success for the couple means the loss of two customers for the company.
That does not mean dating companies are necessarily conspiring to keep people single. Plenty of Americans have met their spouses online. But there is an obvious tension between a business that benefits from continued engagement and a customer whose ultimate goal is to stop using the product forever.
The bigger question is what happens to us while we are using it. Dating apps take enormously complicated human beings and turn them into profiles. A photograph appears alongside a few pieces of information, and someone can be dismissed within seconds. Another possibility immediately takes that person’s place. Dating begins to look remarkably like shopping.
Anyone who shops online knows the trap. You find something you like, but before buying it, you check another page. Perhaps there is something better. More choice was supposed to make choosing easier, yet suddenly, you are less certain about the choice in front of you. That instinct becomes destructive when applied to human relationships.
The problem is not simply that people become more selective. It is that every potential partner is evaluated against someone who might be better but has not yet appeared.
There might be someone more attractive. Someone more compatible. Someone without this person’s irritating habits. Why settle now when another swipe could reveal a better option? Marriage asks something completely different of us.
At some point, dating has to stop being about evaluating possibilities and become a decision about a person. Marriage means saying, “I have chosen.”
Our technology has become extraordinarily good at keeping the possibilities coming. Research is beginning to show that these apps are making it harder for people to make the choice. The problem is compounded because many of the traditional institutions that once helped people choose have weakened.
Families used to play a larger role in introductions, while churches created communities in which relationships developed over time. Those arrangements were hardly perfect, but they offered something an algorithm struggles to provide: the knowledge of someone’s character and the feeling that ghosting someone has actual consequences.
A profile tells you what a person wants you to know. A community sees the person when he is not on a date, not on his best behavior. Over time, people discover whether someone keeps his word and how he behaves when there is nothing to gain. Character becomes visible through ordinary life in a way it never can through photographs and prompts selected for a dating profile.
That matters because choosing a spouse is not principally an exercise in finding the most impressive collection of attributes. It is a judgment about the character of the person with whom you may build a life animated by love.
Many college-aged people are sensing this today. The habit of “SABSing” — See And Be Seen — has recently become popular. It’s a new term to explain life before the apps. It’s a desire to feel normal about meeting someone in real life.
We should stop expecting algorithms to replace the human communities that help people turn an introduction into something more. Parents need not be embarrassed about introducing young adults to people they might actually like. Churches need to become places where organic relationships develop naturally instead of leaving Christian singles to navigate the dating market alone.
Friends can help too, simply by reviving the once-ordinary practice of introducing two people who they believe might enjoy being together.
None of this requires recreating the dating culture of 1955. It requires recognizing the current dating culture and tech in 2026, which spreads loneliness.
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We solved the problem of scarcity. Now we have a problem of abundance.
Finding another possibility has never been easier. Choosing one person may never have felt harder. America does not need technology that keeps people searching; it needs a culture and society that helps them commit.
J.P. De Gance is the founder and president of Communio, a national ministry that equips churches to strengthen families. See communio.org for more.