Dating in the 21st century is a far departure from the days of our parents and grandparents. Gone are the days of courting and dating. Drive-in movie dates and meeting through friends and family seem like a bygone era. Online dating is the norm, and we rely more on apps and casual dating to find the love of our lives. Gen Z, the first generation living with the online dating norm, is taking things back in time. They aren’t just looking for love by swiping. Many are returning to the ways before us to date and make connections. 

Here are some ways that Gen Z is leaning into old-school dating traditions and forgoing the dominant culture of online connections.

Gen Z singles are moving away from dating apps and more toward traditional dating

Dating in the digital age, as digital natives, has not helped Gen Z become any more comfortable with online dating. In fact, many find the practice too impersonal and prefer a real connection. According to an Axios and Generation Lab study, most Gen Zers are not comfortable swiping to find their forever love.

The Axios and Generation Lab study found that 79 percent of respondents do not often use dating apps to find a romantic partner. Instead, more than half of the respondents claimed to have met their current or previous partner through in-person communication. Additionally, the respondents value having sex. Forty-five percent of respondents claim to have never participated in “hookup culture.”

For Gen Z singles, the daily ghosting of online dating has pushed a further romanticism of the older ways of dating that required in-person connection and deeper communication. Telling a person’s tone or intention through texts is tough. It is hard to pick up on the nuance of the conversation when there is no inflection to denote the feelings they are expressing.

The commoditization of love and physical attraction has turned dating, in some cases, into a business. So many apps function in different ways, but the dating pool is all the same. When you aren’t dealing with popup ads, you are being sent sponsored content to increase a company’s bottom line while trying to find a romantic partner.

New generations wants to find love in real ways instead of relying on technology

Gen Z—and Millennials, to be honest—get a lot of flack from older generations for the way they navigate the world. Several headlines weekly discuss how Gen Z isn’t doing this right or how Gen Z is failing at this milestone. A quick search on social media shows that many people are willing and able to speak down about Gen Z and their view of the world. Yet, according to some dating experts, that isn’t a fair assessment.

“My Gen Z clients say they come to me because dating apps are dead, that the waters are polluted, and they’re getting ghosted or catfished,” Alexis Germany Fox, a dating expert and matchmaker, told Popsugar. “Everybody wants to write off Gen Z as being so unserious about everything, but there are a lot of them who are seeking these real, more old-fashioned types of relationships.”

As the trend of in-person dating grows with more Gen Zers entering the dating age, time will tell if this way of dating will take hold again.

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