Amid the bustle of her fellow millennialsβtyping on laptops, taking meetings on lounge chairs and in conference roomsβHazan finds time to give me her romantic history. She was married for 11 years. They had a daughter together. Two years ago, they separated and, a year later, divorced. When Hazan and her ex originally got together, there was no Tinder.
No Bumble. No Instagram. Job loyalty, the family unit, sexβall fading away. Mobile technologyβin this case, social media and dating appsβis seen as the root cause. Certainly, mobile technology has changed how people communicate. Just as text messaging has squeezed out phone calls, dating apps have supplanted blind dates. These apps allow users to swipe through hundreds of profiles, discarding poor matches in an instant, signaling interest at the tap of a screen.
This, for many, is the new face of dating. Courtships are accelerated. Active daters find more choices, but often grapple with decision paralysis. And despite constant connectivity, people seem more isolated than ever. Millennial singles have differing opinions about the pace of app-based dating. He acknowledges, however, that this access has its downside. Hazan agrees. You think, I can do better than this.
This constant search for the next best thing leads to a number of unsavory dating behaviors. Hazan introduces me to an entire lexicon with which I am mostly unfamiliar. This I knew. If you want to have real, meaningful connections, you have to put down the phone. In many cases, nascent relationships never even make their way offline.
Melissa has a theory about the phenomena. The swiping changed things. The gamifying changed things. Economic pressure has also changed the dating lives of millennials. Many entered the workforce at the height of the economic recession, saddled with student loans and facing both a terrible job market and rising housing costs.
