Why young people are swiping left on dating

While expectations of marriage are high, a new study finds that single young adults are actually in a “dating recession,” with just 1 in 3 actively dating and many questioning their own dating skills.

That’s the subject of a new report by the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University. The 2026 State of Our Unions annual report is titled “The Dating Recession: How Bad Is It and What Can We Do?”

The findings are based on the nationally representative 2025 National Dating Landscape Survey, which includes 5,275 unmarried young U.S. adults ages 22 to 35, which one of the authors, Jason Carroll, called the “prime dating years.” Carroll, family initiative director at the institute, said the researchers defined actively dating as going on at least one date a month.

And while the vast majority (86%) say that they plan to marry some day, close to three-fourths of women and two-thirds of men note they have dated very little or not at all within the last year.

Those numbers suggest a disconnect between life goals and how life is unfolding. “The No. 1 takeaway for me is that young adults want to date — but aren’t," Brian J. Willoughby, a professor and associate director of the School of Family Life at BYU, as well as a Wheatley fellow, told Deseret News by email.

According to Carroll, “Most young adults across our country endorse relatively traditional purposes for dating and do not express an overt fear of commitment, but many lack the needed skills for dating and the resilience to handle the natural ups and downs of relationship starts and stops along the journey of dating.”

Lacking confidence

The report by Wheatley Institute scholars found a key factor is a dearth of self-confidence: Just 1 in 3 of the young adult men and 1 in 5 of the young adult women say they feel comfortable approaching someone they are interested in romantically.

“We saw strong indicators that young adults still want long-term and committed romantic relationships in their life. But when we explored what is keeping them from engaging in dating behavior, one of the stronger factors was a lack of confidence,” Willoughby said. “The lack of dating skills in modern young adulthood appears to perhaps be the biggest hurdle to modern dating. I think this is likely because many of these young adults lack dating experiences as teenagers, where dating has plummeted, and now go into adulthood with a lack of real skill development.”

Past dating experiences also play a not insignificant role, with more than half saying that past breakups make them more reluctant to try again romantically. Fewer than 1 in 3 said they can stay positive after a breakup or bad relationship experience.

Willoughby said those bad experiences “appear to be increasingly weighing on single young adults. Most young adults we surveyed had only had a few serious committed relationships but most reported serious reservations about dating based on past bad dating experiences.”

Consequently, dating resilience appears low, per Willoughby. “Having a bad date or bad relationship is challenging for modern young adults to move past. To me, there are parallels here to a broader lack of resilience skills in modern young adults — tied to the loneliness and depression epidemic — that appear to be carrying over into dating."

Financial barriers are a really critical factor, as well. More than half overall — including 58% of men and 46% of women — said they don’t feel like they can financially afford to date.

That finding was no surprise to the researchers.

“Many young adults expressed that a lack of money or perceived current and future financial barriers got in the way of dating. This is no longer about a wedding being expensive. As inflation has had influence, simple dating behaviors like eating out — where one date could easily cost $60-100 for two at a decent restaurant — more and more young adults are expressing reservations about the financial cost of dating. Not to mention the rising cost of online dating apps and platforms," Willoughby said.

Looking for romance

Despite those findings, 83% of the young women and 74% of the young men said they would like to see dating culture focus on forming serious relationships.

Among the report’s highlights:

• About 3 in 10 said they are dating at all, while about half say they would like to start a relationship. Young men are much more likely to say that than young women, 60% vs. 43%.
• Why date? The poll found reasons include creating emotional connections and forming a serious relationship, along with getting to know potential romantic partners, seeking romantic experiences, personal growth and learning about oneself and what one desires in a personal relationship.
• More than half of males (55%) listed physical intimacy as a reason to date, while just 35% of females said that.
• Two-thirds overall called marriage a life goal, though 47% said that’s a goal at this point in their life. A similar number, 46%, said they’d like to be married now.
• Most don’t think there’s an “ideal age” to marry, but for those who do, 30 was most often listed. Between 27 and 31 were given as ideal.
• Among those who said they’d like to marry, the median age they said it was likely to happen was 33 for women and 35 for men.

The survey did not find the oft-cited fear of long-term commitment or of losing personal freedom, nor did those surveyed express worries that dating will set their educational and career plans.

Building basic dating skills

In background material, the report’s authors said that “young adults need healthy dating skills and an effective road map that guides them to and through the dating experiences that will connect their marital expectations to actual dating relationships. Such an approach would teach dating skills like how to approach someone you’re interested in, how to make smart dating choices and how to improve communication skills.”

The researchers added that other lessons like “how to deal with bad dating experiences and painful breakups, and creative dating options with cheaper price tags would also be beneficial.”

Said Carroll, who is also a scholar with the Institute for Family Studies, “The key finding is that there is a ‘marital-expectations’ vs. ‘dating-skills’ gap for most young adults today. This gap calls for a concerted effort to teach young adults healthy dating skills, something that receives little attention from the general culture or even the relationship education field. Young adults could use some basic help in building dating skills. Their desires and attitudes are not the problem. 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 romantic relationships.

The report’s other authors were Alan J. Hawkins and W. Bradford Wilcox. Hawkins is an emeritus professor at BYU and a member of the Utah Marriage Commission, as well as vice-chair of the National Alliance for Relationship and Marriage Education. Wilcox directs the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, where he is a professor of sociology. He’s also a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies, as well as a frequent Deseret News contributor.

A look at household makeup

The report also includes a supplementary section titled “Social Indicators of Marital Health and Well-Being,” by Spence L. James, another Wheatley scholar and BYU professor in the School of Family Life.

The supplement notes that contemporary Americans are less likely to marry compared to historical trends. But among those who do, the share who describe their union as “very happy” has seen just small declines, “suggesting marital quality has been stable.”

James also notes that “the American divorce rate is about where it was in the late 1960s and has been continually declining since it peaked in the early 1980s.” He writes, however, that close to 80% of Americans agree that divorce is morally acceptable, which was true of fewer than 60% around the turn of the century.

Nearly 1 in 8 households is headed by unmarried, cohabiting adults.

James also found that when it comes to teen attitudes, a good majority of both males and females have wanted “a good marriage and family life,” but the share, while still a majority, has decreased some. Teen boys are less optimistic than girls about lifelong marriage and future family formation, but the gender gap is closing as girls’ expectations have been dropping.