Welcome to the dating recession: Why young Americans are giving up on love
Remember "Netflix and chill?" About 10 years ago, the slang emerged like a Gen Z mating call: "Wanna come over and … hang out?"
Maybe it wasn’t the most elegant dating scene, but at least it was a dating scene. According to new study from the Wheatley Institute and the Institute for Family Studies, today’s young adults are in a "dating recession" — 2026 is all Netflix and no chill.
Our 2026 "State of our Unions" report, which surveyed 5,275 single adults between the ages of 22-35, found that only one in three of eligible young adults are actively dating. Nearly three quarters of women (74%) and two-thirds of men (64%) had not a single date, or dated only a few times, in the last year.
So, what’s throwing cold water on what’s supposed to be the most sexually charged phase of adult life?
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One of the most significant barriers to dating is an epidemic loss of self-confidence among young adults. Only about one in three said they felt comfortable approaching someone they were interested in, and less than 40% said they felt confident in their ability to talk about their feelings with a dating partner.
That’s not altogether alarming — vulnerability with a new person is always uncomfortable. Dating has always been a high-risk, high-reward game. What’s more alarming than that fear of intimacy is our finding that only 36% of young adults say they’re confident they can read social cues on dates. They don’t know how to be with someone else.
This hints at a bigger cause: kids aren’t just avoiding dates, they aren’t socializing at all. Last year, the Institute for Family Studies found that the average time young adults spent in person with friends in a given week has fallen by 50% since 2010. Other research has found that American adults are spending more time alone today — even post-pandemic — than ever before.
American teens spend an average of nearly four hours a day on social media and even longer on their smartphones generally. Is it any wonder that kids buried in a virtual world don’t know how to make eye contact or read body language? You can’t learn to read social cues unless you try reading social cues. Maybe Netflix actually killed the chill.
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Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt believes so much smartphone use also arrests development of resilience. Young people who don’t take risks don’t learn how to weather failure. Our research found another significant reason (48%) that young people aren’t asking each other out is their fear of repeating a painful past dating experience.
Still, the ‘dating recession’ is not for lack of desire. Despite their loner tendencies, 86% of our survey respondents said they hope to get married one day.
That, at least, is encouraging: our research also suggests married adults, particularly married parents, consistently report the highest levels of personal well-being and happiness. Recent research found married mothers and fathers 18 to 55 are almost twice as likely to be "very happy" with their lives, compared to their single and childless peers.
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Unfortunately, if today’s trends continue, at least one in three adults who are in their twenties today will never marry. That means fewer people will have children, too. A dating recession will make those numbers even bleaker.
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That means more young adults risk the fate of Elizabeth, a charming and ambitious young lawyer living in Texas. Elizabeth says she’s always desired marriage, but didn’t prioritize dating in her college years. "I thought, let’s wait until I’m established, and have gotten through my education and I’m settled somewhere long-term for my career before I really look for someone," she said.
Fast-forward to Elizabeth’s graduation from law school, when she finally came up for air and found that marriage seemed farther away than ever. "Having not been in any serious relationship before, I didn’t really know how to do it," she said.
By pop-culture standards, Elizabeth did everything right: she worked hard, built an impressive career, and didn’t get ‘tied down’ too early. But visiting her sister recently, who took the opposite path — got married young, and had just had her third baby — Elizabeth said she was gutted to realize she’d have given "every dollar in [her] bank account" to have her sisters’ life.
This Valentine’s Day, young adults who desire a relationship should embrace the risk. They might not feel particularly confident, but there’s good news: according to our research, neither does anyone else. That’s ok. Love is messy. But it’s what makes life worthwhile.
Brad Wilcox, author of "Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization," is distinguished university professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies.