- In the Wheatley Institute's newly released 2026 State of Our Unions report, only about 1 in 3 young adults surveyed across the U.S. report actively dating, either casually or exclusively.
- Dating confidence is also low, with the same number of 1 in 3 young adults expressing faith in their dating skills — with 49% admitting this lack of confidence gets in the way of dating.
- Despite this, large majorities of young adults — both women and men, younger and older — strongly endorse a dating culture focused on forming serious relationships.
- The biggest barrier to dating, according to 52% of young people surveyed, was not having enough money.
- Nearly half of young adults say bad dating experiences in the past get in the way of current dating — with equal numbers agreeing that difficult breakups have made them more reluctant to begin new relationships.
There is good news about marriage that everyone can cheer: Marriages are becoming more stable today than they were four to five decades ago. Granted, much of this stability bonus is a result of who is marrying.
Couples with riskier profiles for marital breakup have become a decreasing proportion of all marrying couples, so couples who marry today are more likely to have a set of characteristics that lend themselves to more stable marriages. For instance, these marrying couples today are more likely to be better educated, more financially stable, more religious and less likely to marry as teens.
Regardless of its causes, greater marital stability is something to celebrate because of the known benefits that stable, healthy marriages give to children, adults and their communities. Hidden in this encouraging trend, however, is a paradox: Increasing marital stability exists alongside a strong trend of fewer adults getting married.
Rates of first marriages have fallen by more than 10% over the past two decades, continuing a steady descent since the 1970s. Demographers now estimate that as many as a third of young adults born in the early decades of the 21st century may never marry.
It is hard to celebrate stronger marriages when fewer and fewer young people are entering into them. This is concerning news.
Numerous scholars are exploring why fewer young adults are marrying. Increased focus on post-secondary education and careers during young adulthood, along with a declining cultural emphasis on the need to be married, are commonly cited factors.
But one straightforward reason for the decline in marriage rates that has not received much attention is the dating system. If you listen to young adults, many of them will tell you that the dating system is badly broken. They are frustrated by the current dating landscape. They grumble about dating apps that present an abundance of options a mere swipe away, while also promoting an attitude of relational consumerism. And the repetitive cycle of matching, messaging and meeting that ends in disappointment is leading to significant dating fatigue and a growing cynicism about the whole process. Similarly, most young adults say they dislike the casual hook-up culture that pervades dating and its emphasis on uncommitted, one-off sexual activity over building meaningful relationships.
If the on-ramps to our marital highways are bumpy, broken or blocked, it is no mystery why many young adults are struggling to reach their desired marriage destinations.
To use another analogy, the contemporary dating economy is struggling and perhaps in a recession.
Despite a broken, receding dating system, a healthy majority of young people today still desire a future that includes marriage. Can our contemporary dating system, with the right reforms, still get them there?
In a new research report, our team found that young adults today are indeed living in a depressed dating economy. This is our conclusion after analyzing findings from our 2025 National Dating Landscape Survey, a nationally representative sample in the U.S. of 5,275 unmarried young adults in their prime dating years (ages 22–35).
These young people were religious and nonreligious, liberal and conservative, and spread across the United States. Yet our particular analyses focused mostly on the dating experiences of those single young adults who expect to marry someday (86%; N = 4,539) — so as to better understand how we can increase U.S. marriage rates.
Our findings are detailed in the 2026 State of Our Unions report released this week by the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University and the Institute for Family Studies.
What we learned
Here are some of the key numbers we found:
Only about 1 in 3 young adults reports actively dating.
Only 30% of young adults reported that they are dating, either casually or exclusively. When asked how often they were dating, only 31% of young adults — a quarter of women (26%) and a little more than a third of men (36%) — reported that they were active daters (dating once a month or more).
By contrast, three-quarters of women (74%) and nearly two-thirds of men (64%) in our survey reported that they had not dated or dated only a few times in the last year.
Young adults lack confidence in their dating skills and their ability to initiate a promising romantic relationship.
Among the rising generation, dating confidence is low, with only about 1 in 3 young adults expressing much faith in their dating skills.
Only about 1 in 3 young adult men and 1 in 5 young adult women expressed confidence in the fundamental skill of being able to approach someone they were romantically interested in. Less than 4 in 10 (37%) said they trusted their judgment when it comes to choosing a dating partner.
A similar minority of young adults expressed confidence in their ability to discuss feelings with a dating partner (34%) and to pick up on social cues on dates (36%).
Young adults desire a dating culture aimed at forming serious relationships.
Despite a common narrative that young adults are only interested in casual dating and unattached hookups, we found that young adults — both women and men, younger and older — strongly endorse a dating culture focused on forming serious relationships. That includes 83% of women and 74% of men.
Equally strong percentages endorse other, more traditional purposes for dating, such as creating emotional connections (83% of women and 76% of men) and learning what they want in a future partner (63% of both women and men).
While dating frequency may be low, most young adults seem to yearn for the connection of serious dating. By comparison, less than a quarter of young adults endorsed only the social purposes for dating — to be a part of social activities, fitting in with others, etc.
Money worries, self-confidence and past bad dating experiences are big barriers in the modern dating landscape.
Young adults reported significant financial and social/emotional barriers to dating. The biggest barrier to dating they expressed was not having enough money, endorsed by more than half of respondents (52%), including 58% of men and 46% of women.
Contemporary dating usually involves real expenses, like dinner for two at a nice restaurant and concert tickets (and even movie tickets these days are eye-popping). More and more young adults feel they can’t afford to date this way.
Respondents also frequently reported that personal factors get in the way of dating, such as a lack of confidence (49%) and bad dating experiences in the past (48%). Relatively few expressed fears about long-term commitment or interference with career/education priorities.
Dating resilience is low among young adults.
Nearly half of young adults (45%) agreed that their relationship breakups have made them more reluctant to begin new romantic relationships. Half reported that their breakups have left them with negative feelings about relationships in general.
The dating-marriage-skills gap
Our study shows that there appears to be a gap between marital expectations and dating skills for most young adults today. Their desires and attitudes are not the problem, for the most part. They want to build real human connections, form serious relationships, explore what they want in a future long-term partner and desire the personal growth that comes from forming serious attachments.
And contrary to common beliefs, most appear not to be afraid of commitment or losing personal freedom. Moreover, few fear that dating will interfere with their educational and career plans.
However robust these desires seem to be, real-life dating realities do not appear to correspond. Most young adults are dating rarely or not at all. This suggests that our young adults need effective road maps that guide them to and through the dating experiences that will connect their marital aspirations to actual relationships — and eventually actual marriages.
Accordingly, a primary, straightforward implication of the findings from our study is that young adults could use some basic help in building dating skills. Few are regularly dating. They report feeling unprepared and having a low sense of dating efficacy. They lack experience and social and emotional confidence, and they need to stretch their basic social skills. They struggle to know how to express their interest in a potential dating partner and to communicate effectively on a date. Also, they are discouraged by the cost of dating.
What would more dating education look like?
These are hardly insurmountable barriers. We have no doubt that motivated young adults can learn the dating skills they need to form healthy relationships that eventually lead to marriage.
This ideally starts with those closest to them. Parents, grandparents and close family members can take an active role in mentoring and helping young people develop the social skills, virtues and personal confidence to date. Collectively, we need to prioritize the social and relationship development of children, teens and young adults in much the same way we rigorously promote their academic or athletic development.
We also believe that relationship educators — those uniquely skilled at providing basic relationship literacy to teens, marriage preparation classes for engaged couples, ongoing marital enrichment workshops for married couples and even intensive retreats for struggling couples thinking about divorce — are not currently meeting the needs of dating young adults.
In our view, relationship educators need to develop a new niche: dating education. Generic relationship skills education does not sufficiently address the ABCs of how to date. Many of the challenges young adults face in their dating lives can be surmounted with better knowledge and concrete skills, accompanied by caring coaching from their loved ones.
We are not suggesting that dating culture alone explains our current declines in marriage. Clearly, there are other influences involved, ranging from excessive screen time to the deforming effects of pervasive pornography, as well as changing attitudes toward religious practice and the much-discussed impact of political hostilities on young men and women. For example, Dan Cox, the director of the Survey Center on American Life, a project of the American Enterprise Institute, has recently documented how a growing political divide between young men and young women may be impacting our dating culture.
In the end, an eroding dating culture is both a root and a fruit of marriage decline. We acknowledge that young adults are embedded in complex cultural and social systems that also influence their dating experiences. And our recommended focus on enhanced educational efforts does not diminish the need for broader cultural and policy efforts to reduce the cost barriers to marital formation, such as employment barriers, higher education costs and unaffordable housing.
All these other policy efforts, however, will not produce the positive results we hope for if we don’t collectively rebuild the dating culture. In the absence of these proactive efforts, we believe we can expect an ongoing dating recession that will continue to depress future marriage rates and all the known benefits of healthy marriages for adults, their children and their communities.
This dating recession is more than just another challenge facing young adults today. Their lack of dating experiences represents a dearth of precious connections that prime their souls for one of the richest experiences humans can have — romantic love and long-term marriage.
We hope this new report can kindle cultural and professional conversations about these new challenges to marriage formation and spur efforts on the part of parents, relationship educators, counselors and even policymakers to help young adults improve their dating skills and opportunities.
Read the full report in the 2026 State of our Unions report here.