How the Digital Age Contributes To Nonchalance & Romance amongst Gen-Z.

Commentary on the digital age & the consequential superficiality, nonchalance,

            and short attention spans that undermine meaningful connections.

Social Media Connection
“It’s that damn phone!”

There are certainly critiques to be made about the digital age and the hold that the devices have on younger folks. You can fill in a lot of the gaps of a person’s personal information just from looking at their social media pages–it should not be that easy for someone to find out your dog’s name, where you went to college, and how your mom has an unhealthy obsession with popping pimples. Everything has become too easy to stumble upon and acquire knowledge from.

This influx of information that has become available during the digital age is actually disturbing. You no longer have to have a conversation with a potential crush to get to know them. First dates are no longer necessary to decide if you’ll daydream about them at work. All the screening information you dig up on someone’s social media account is enough to decide whether you will pursue them or not. This is the same case when users on dating applications screen a dating profile and decide within a few seconds if they are worth pursuing.

Application Formats and How They Contribute to Quick Decision Making
Now that we have background information on the ease of investigating a potential lover’s social handle, we can establish a pattern of Gen Z’s on-the-spot decisions and love bombing. How does the digital age contribute to superficial relationships? It started with computers that required users to scroll with a mouse, which transitioned into a touchpad where users would swipe up or down. These swipe movements eventually transferred onto tablets and touch screen phones. The question posed amongst application makers was, “How do we make applications that are not too complicated but addictive at the same time?”

Application developers made applications that leveraged the well-known finger swipe movements so that users could make quick decisions (low mental load) and stay on their platform. After social media applications received tremendous success from this user format, dating applications soon followed. It is one thing to make quick and on-the-spot decisions about pictures you like and people you will ‘follow’, but it is another thing to make quick decisions about someone you could potentially date. Because social media preceded dating apps, social media users treated dating applications in the same way, by making fast decisions based on pictures. This transfer of attitude onto a completely different application led to superficial relationships on dating apps. The term “superficial” within the dating world can be referred to as surface level and being nothing of substance. When you combine dating apps with users’ expectations of superficial relationships and chats, it leads users to swipe mindlessly because chances are it has become a habit (not finding someone of substance).

Dating Apps are Addictive and Do Not Want You to Find Love
Dating apps are designed to have users perform two primary functions: swipe left or swipe right. Swiping left means you are not interested and swiping right means that person has caught your attention. Bumble, Hinge, and Tinder have taken it amongst themselves to appeal to the Gen-Z masses by feeding into our short attention spans and instant dopamine hits that come from scrolling. All in all, rapid fire function dating apps accompanied with direct access to someone’s information has conditioned Gen Z to make on-the-spot decisions. If the concept of dating apps is supposed to help you find the special someone (and leave their app entirely), why are their platforms so addicting? It is an oxymoron. These applications generate money from the amount of users the platform has and the time spent on them.

It’s almost as if you are in that Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief scene where the group found its way into the casino and stayed for five days straight because they were consuming lotus flowers. The lotus flower's addictive ingredient and time-forgetting feature made them believe they were having the time of their lives but in reality the casino wanted to keep them there for their own gain. Is the picture being painted? The apps want you to stay on their app, so they construct an environment that makes it hard for users to leave. Gen-Z’s nonchalant attitude towards dating benefits the apps because it means users will spend more time creating multiple superficial relationships over a few meaningful relationships. Gen-Z’s nonchalant attitudes are reinforced by dating apps. In the back of a user’s mind is the thought,“If not this one, there are so many others”.

Let’s take a look at a few user paths on dating apps:

Path 1: You swipe right → Love interest swipes left → End. → The search restarts.
Path 2: Swipe right →  Love interest swipes right → Chat for one afternoon → Ghosted → End.  → The search restarts.
Path 3: Swipe right →  Love interest swipes right → Chat and flirt an insane amount for a week  → Phone call → Date → You and love interest do not click in person → End.  → The search restarts.
Path 4: Swipe right →  Love interest swipes right → Chat, flirt and talk about the future shamelessly (Lovebombing), and convince yourself this is THE one → Date for 4-6 months → You question what happened but are unphased at the end of the day because you come to the realization it was a lovebombed relationship  → End.  → The search restarts.

*All paths lead you to start your search again: but more importantly, keep you on the app*

Texting on Dating Apps: Who is more nonchalant?
There is one aspect that stays consistent within most of the paths. The “chat and flirt” phase. The users outside of Gen Z’s age range are at a disadvantage when it comes to grasping this phase. The chatting that occurs is superficial and disconnected. It is essentially a competition to see who is less invested. For example, if User A texted User B at 11am with a two sentence reply, that means User B has to reply at the end of the work day and with two sentences or less. As for the content of these texts, they are mostly small talk questions and updates about work or school. What a snoozefest. Overall, the time and length constraints within User A and User B’s texts has become commonplace for this age group.

End Bit
The digital age has fueled Gen-Z’s nonchalant and unserious attitudes towards dating. The transfer of social media attitudes to dating apps, priority of instant dopamine hits, low attention spans, and the design of dating app platforms has contributed to the nonchalant dating scene. Dating applications have exacerbated this nonchalant competition and makes everyone think that there will always be another person to pursue. It also makes people have low levels of commitment towards others which could possibly be why so many people have low levels of empathy — but I digress. Suggestion: Let’s take a page from older generations and get back to a slow burn approach towards courting that special someone. In other words, get off that damn phone!