Dating Apps Face a Relevance Crisis: 70% of Singles Aren't Interested

The dating industry has spent the past decade obsessing over swipe fatigue, match rates, and algorithm optimisation whilst ignoring a far more fundamental problem: half the adult population doesn't date at all, and 70% of singles won't touch an app with a bargepole. According to a Marquette Law School Poll of more than 1,500 US adults conducted in mid-June, the battle for market share looks increasingly like rearranging deck chairs when most people aren't on the ship.

The figures are stark. Just 15% of single adults use dating apps at least once monthly, with another 13% checking in a few times yearly. Meanwhile, 27% of all adults go on dates at least monthly — nearly double the monthly app usage rate amongst singles. The maths tells an uncomfortable story: people are dating without apps more than they're using apps to date.

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The generational trust collapse nobody's talking about

Buried in the Marquette data is a demographic time bomb. Only 35% of adults born in the 2000s — Gen Z, the supposed digital native cohort — believe most people can be trusted, compared to 77% of those born before 1960. Dating apps scaled precisely as their core demographic became the least trusting generation in modern history.

The timing couldn't be worse. Tinder launched in 2012 targeting millennials and Gen Z. Match Group (MTCH) and Bumble (BMBL) built their growth narratives around digital-first dating for younger cohorts. But they were selling stranger-matching technology to a generation that fundamentally doesn't trust strangers. It's a structural mismatch that no amount of verification badges or safety features can resolve.

The poll found that higher levels of trust correlate with more frequent interactions with strangers, though the survey doesn't establish causation. What's clear is that the cohort most comfortable meeting strangers — pre-1960s births — are largely out of the dating market by age. The cohort that apps need most — under-40s — are the ones least inclined to trust the premise.

The offline dating majority

Perhaps most damaging for the industry's self-importance: people in their 30s report dating more frequently than those in their 20s, with most singles over 40 saying they don't date at all. This maps poorly onto app usage demographics, where younger users dominate the online dating landscape. The poll suggests 27% of all adults date at least monthly, whilst 24% date a few times yearly. That's 51% participating in dating to some degree — yet only 28% of singles touch apps even occasionally.

Work remains the primary source of face-to-face interactions, according to the survey. More than half of adults spend social evenings with friends at least monthly. Nearly 60% start conversations with strangers at least once a month, and 80% greet strangers in passing. The paradox is glaring: people are still socially active and willing to engage strangers in most contexts. They just won't do it romantically, and they especially won't do it on apps.

This points to a barrier specific to romantic connection rather than general social paralysis. Adults are talking to strangers at the gym, at work, in queues. They're just not converting those interactions into dates — and they're certainly not downloading an app to manufacture them.

The phone problem that apps created

The survey also found that 41% of respondents turn to their phones all or most of the time when around others, rather than engaging in conversation, with another 40% doing so sometimes. Dating apps didn't create smartphone addiction, but they've certainly professionalised the commodification of attention. Every operator knows their DAU and session length metrics. Few seem to grapple with whether their product contributes to the very social atomisation that makes offline dating harder.

The industry has positioned itself as the solution to modern dating's challenges whilst simultaneously training users to treat romantic prospects as infinite, swipeable, and replaceable. Then it wonders why trust levels crater and non-participation soars.

For Match Group, which disclosed $3.19B in 2024 revenue almost entirely from dating apps, the non-user problem is existential. The company can't grow by converting more of its existing user base — ARPU has limits. It needs to expand the addressable market. But if 70% of singles have already rejected the category, where's the growth?

Bumble (BMBL) has tried to differentiate on safety and women-first design, yet still faces the same adoption ceiling. Grindr (GRND) operates in a separate market dynamic, but even there, the question persists: how many men who have sex with men simply won't use apps, and why?

What comes next

The conventional operator response will be iterative: better onboarding, more verification, AI-powered matching, niche positioning. None of that addresses the core issue. If the problem is that half the population doesn't date and most singles won't use apps, the product isn't the answer. The premise is.

Some operators will pivot to events, offline activations, or hybrid models — anything to reach the 70% who've opted out digitally. Others will double down on the 30% they have, squeezing more revenue from a static user base. Both strategies accept the same reality: the dating app as currently conceived has hit its ceiling, and the next phase of growth requires admitting that most people simply don't want what the industry is selling.

The Marquette poll was conducted between 9-15 June and captures a snapshot, not a trend. But combined with stagnant user growth across major platforms and collapsing valuations for MTCH and BMBL over the past two years, it's hard to read this as anything other than confirmation of what operators already suspected. Nearly half of U.S. adults say dating has gotten harder for most people, and the industry has a demand problem, not a supply problem. Research confirms that whilst about 30% of US adults have used a dating site or app, the non-participating majority represents a fundamental challenge no amount of product optimisation will fix.

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