Gen Z Women Delete Dating Apps Within a Month: 'It's a Waste of Time'

While finding love might be seen as an online game by many in today's culture, there's a wave of Gen Z-ers ditching the apps and searching for someone in-person.

A whopping 65 percent of dating apps get deleted within just a month, a recent AppsFlyer survey found. And of those who uninstall the apps, 90 percent do it within a week.

"Deleting dating apps is a rebellion against the digital dating scene that feels superficial and exhausting to so many people," Morgan Anderson, a licensed clinical psychologist and relationship coach, told Newsweek. "The trend of returning to 'dating in the wild' is a breath of fresh air to so many daters who feel burnt out from endless swiping, and failed connections."

Dating apps became a way of life since Tinder and its more relationship friendly competitors, Bumble and Hinge, came on the scene, and a slew of unique dating platforms continue to emerge looking to lure in singles.

But it might no longer be worth it, some Gen Z women say.

Brianna Spinella, a 24-year-old in Staten Island, said she deleted the apps when she realized all the criteria she put into it didn't matter.

"The apps were showing me whoever they wanted and it was always the same people," Spinella told Newsweek. Even if I tried changing my location like Hinge allows, it didn't make a difference. None of the people were on my wavelength and most were looking for hookups."

While the apps allow you to get to know people you wouldn't otherwise meet, they also let more people hide behind screens and discourage approaching strangers in person, Spinella said.

"These apps are becoming more about money, buying roses, and boosts that it seems it is becoming more and more disingenuous," Spinella said.

Despite growing up inside an online dating culture prone to hookups, many Gen Z-ers are questioning it from the inside.

Alice, another woman who deleted dating apps and wishes to use an alias, said dating apps making the art of finding love nearly impossible due to the broad target audience.

"'Dating' is an umbrella term that includes people who want to get married yesterday, people who never want to get married, people who aren't sure what their dating goals are, etc," Alice told Newsweek." You have all those people in the same place swiping on each other and even worse, you get to self-declare how ready you are for a connection, which can be completely fabricated."

While Hinge lets you say you're looking for a short-term relationship and open to long ones, for instance, Alice said that usually means men are just looking for a hookup. Or they'll just say long-term relationship because it makes them more "marketable," she said.

Another woman, Madison, also using an alias, hasn't necessarily deleted the apps, but she no longer opens them anymore, she told Newsweek.

"It's a lot of chatting and people rarely want to meet in person. They are flaky too," Madison told Newsweek. "It takes a lot of energy to meet someone and most of the time it's a waste of time. I have met someone I loved off an app years ago so I know it can happen but it's just overwhelming. There are hundreds of matches and you might meet one out of 100."

It's not just women becoming frustrated with dating apps, either.

While women might complain about the quality of men or the inability to find someone looking for more than a hookup, men report different but still challenging problems.

Many say it takes weeks to get even a few matches, and responses are hard to come by, with one early report finding 50 percent of women's likes go to just 15 percent of the male users on apps. This makes some consider buying dating apps' premium versions in hopes of getting more likes and ultimately second-guessing their self-worth in the process.

Jimmy Thakkar, age 44, said he also deleted his app after realizing how common fake and AI profiles were. He said the genuine profiles were hidden away and only available to those paying for a subscription.

"The app was downloaded with the intention of finding compatible dates," Thakkar told Newsweek. "I had to delete the app because I could see a lot of fake profiles and profiles that hardly had their pictures on display."

But it's also not just the youth. Older generations are similarly skeptical of the apps when it comes to finding love.

Jackie Pilossoph is in her 50s and founded the website Divorced Girl Smiling. She also joined a dating app and uninstalled it from her phone within just a week of use.

Despite the pushback these apps receive for their impact on modern dating, Pilossoph believes we can't blame the app builders entirely.

"I don't think dating apps have failed people," Pilossoph told Newsweek. "I think dating app users have failed people."

"There are countless people using dating apps who forgot that the people they are ghosting, ignoring, writing sexually inappropriate things to have feelings. It's so much easier to be treat people badly when you are hiding behind the dating app."

Looking ahead, Pilossoph thinks dating apps are about to run their course, mostly existing so long because of the isolation people felt during the pandemic.

"In a few years, they won't be what they are today," Pilossoph said. "I think people are exhausted by feeling hurt and anxious and not good enough when they talk to others on dating apps. It's disappointment after disappointment after disappointment."

Pilossoph said dating apps will always be a business, but we might be at the edge of a major drop in the number of users as people have had enough.

"Can people find love on a dating app? Yes, but I think it comes at a high price, that you have to put up with so much bad behavior," Pilossoph said.

What Do The Dating App Creators Say?

Even dating app founders are honest that the online dating landscape is not a perfect one to navigate today, and there are many real reasons why one would download, delete and repeat.

"People who use them are not fully honest and intentional about what they are looking for," Joe Feminella, the founder and CEO of the app First Round's On Me, told Newsweek. "In fact, some aren't even looking for anything at all."

First Round's On Me distinguishes itself from other apps by encouraging users to meet quickly instead of having endless small talk and swiping.

Feminella said most dating apps fail because they build themselves around data, retention and activity. While that works in the majority of business models, dating is different.

"A dating app is supposed to be a technological tool to help people find a connection," Feminella said. "Not one that cares more about keeping them on the app, then having a success story or helping people find love."

When dating apps were first introduced, millions of people suddenly gained a tool that was foreign to them, and everyone just expected people to use them correctly, Feminella said.

"I compare it to the idea that one day, we just introduced sex to human beings out of nowhere," Feminella said. "Gave them no rules on how to do it, no guidelines on how it should be or how to be respectful when going about it. What a chaotic world that would be, something I think has been reflected in a lot of people's frustrations with the apps, pure chaos."

That doesn't mean that with time dating apps can't change, though. Feminella anticipates there could be a notable shift in how people approach their dating lives in the near future.

"They will be setting boundaries and being more intentional in what they want," Feminella said. "We are seeing that a majority of users, when serious about their dating app activity, don't want to be pen pals with multiple people, and would rather meet in real life."

The rise of artificial intelligence could also mean fewer people consider dating apps in the near future. Users already report being unable to tell when they're chatting with a real person versus a bot, and that makes looking for love far more difficult.

"In the next few years I believe AI is going to make all chat-based dating apps obsolete," Skip app's CEO and Founder Scott Avy told Newsweek. "With recent AI advancements like chat GPT, it can be hard to know if you're talking to an AI bot or a real person before the date, making chat a pretty ineffective way to filter potential dates. These AI advancements cause people to not trust chat as a reliable source of vetting their potential dates."

Skip seeks to get around this hurdle by bringing people on the app immediately together for an in-person date, with no chat involved at all.

And what of all those happy couples that found each other on dating apps?

Research shows that 39 percent of couples say they met online, but it's incredibly rare to meet someone who said they enjoyed dating on apps, Rachel Abramowitz, the CEO of relationship tool Keepler, said.

"I have yet to hear one person say, 'You know what, I loved dating on these apps. It was such a rewarding and nourishing experience,'" Abramowitz told Newsweek. "Most people, when they succeed, succeed by the skin of their teeth."