When I was in high school, all my friends were dating or had a boyfriend. It was the same in college. Some later met their spouse at work. By the time I entered law school, many of my friends had married or were about to get married. For late daters like me, by the time we graduated law school, many of us were in serious relationships, and most led to marriages.
Now it seems dating is no longer as straightforward. In our hyperconnected world of instant messaging, dating apps, social clubs, and Craigslist creepy Missed Connections, I’m seeing plenty of gainfully employed singles in Silicon Valley who still haven’t met anyone they want to date.
A 2026 Mormon survey found that 70% of young adults age 22-35 are not dating. Dating means you go out with someone on a date at least once a month.
Clubbing in Shanghai, China
For the delusional, it’s not a date if you share coffee pics with someone you’ve only “met” online. And you can’t claim you “dated” a guy you only met for 12 minutes because you fooled him with your fake filtered photo then he ghosted you after he saw you IRL.
The cost of dating
So why aren’t the youth dating? Just like with everything in life, the biggest barrier is lack of MONEY. Majority of singles can’t afford to pay for the experience of going out.
There’s no avoiding a meal if you go out on a date. Even if you eat in a fast food like Chipotle and split the bill, you will still pay $20 each. Then after you eat, what are you going to do?
A basic movie date consists of driving ($18), dining ($30), movie ($40), drinks and snacks ($20), dessert ($12) which totals $120. The minimum wage in California is $16.90 an hour so one movie date is worth a day’s wage. Yikes. I don’t even have Netflix Premium.
For low cost and a quick getaway, some app daters meet for coffee. For the price of a $6.55 Starbucks Frappuccino, you can quickly see if your Potential Mate actually looks like his ok profile pic or if he’s a jobless poseur.
If you don’t want to spend much on a date, where can you go? Free places include the park, beach, malls, and a person’s house. A friend’s party is a great place to meet your friends’ cool friends and cute childhood crush.
Confidence & conversation
Chickens are the other main reason few are dating. Half of non-daters say they lack the confidence to approach someone or talk to a person. Even when singles are together socially, they usually keep to themselves or go on their phones. “No one knows how to talk anymore,” says active dater Chad, an engineer.
When I introduced quiet Stu to sweet Sue, he didn’t say anything. We just stood there in silence. Later Stu said he was interested in Sue. But till now, he hasn’t made any move to contact her. Stu earns well and wants to marry but he has never gone on a date and isn’t doing anything about it. He’s almost 40.
So even if you have money, you may not have the guts to form the serious relationship and emotional connection that 79% of young singles crave. Despite their cowardice, a majority of non-daters still expect to marry by age 30.
Burn
MS is a film student who took a girl out. It was a whole production. He drove an hour to fetch her, drove another hour to the Palace of Fine Arts, impressed her with a reservation to a restaurant with better ambience than food, drove to stroll a San Francisco park with a cloudy view, then took her home an hour away. All the while they talked and laughed easily. She said she had a really good time and agreed to date again. Days later she texted that she wasn’t looking for anything serious and would like to concentrate on her studies.
MS doesn’t know what happened. But he’s chill. A bad dating experience is another reason for the current dating recession. When a date goes bad, singles become so discouraged that half just give up.
Now even if you braved dating and became a couple, there’s bound to be failure. A breakup is another reason 55% of singles are reluctant to get into a new relationship.
That’s the case with Sue, a 20s Silicon Valley tech worker who broke up with her longterm boyfriend. She’s taking a break from dating that she hasn’t dated for over a year. I’ve been trying to introduce her to a nice engineer but she’s not interested. “I’m good right now.”
In contrast, Kay, a Silicon Valley tech worker in her 30s is on a dating app and has been actively going on blind dates. Kay is ready to marry but there’s always something amazingly wrong with every guy she’s dated. “It’s so hard to find someone to connect with and talk to.”
Kay remains hopeful. She is one of the 28% who has the resilience to weather a bad date or relationship setback.
Dating apps
It’s hard to be attractive on a dating app if you’re ugly. Users choose you for your looks. Then you have to be clever with your comments. That already rules out the majority of awkward nerds like me who prefer to cover my face with a book.
Tinder is notorious for hookups. Bumble is for finding “friends”. So Hinge is for “serious” hookups meetups.
On Hinge, women get waaay more matches than men. Women can get 50 matches a week while men get one, or seven if he’s tall. “You don’t have to be pretty on Hinge. You just have to be a girl,” said Chad.
While a girl can be deluged with 100 unread messages a day, men shotgun Like every female and wait for anyone to respond (Pretty please?!?). This demand discrepancy creates a problem. It makes the women complacent.
“Women think they have many options,” Chad said, “So they’re not in a rush to get into a relationship.”
Many users get addicted to Hinge because of the instant gratification from the messages you get from thirsty guys and girls. The deluge of messages and Likes makes you feel like you’re making a connection that you don’t need to actually go out. It’s an easy, free, no-risk way of “Putting yourself out there”. But just like implants, none of it is real.
“Dating is cooked!” — Chad
Here’s the scene: Not enough single women who want to socialize. When women do go out, the men don’t know how to approach them. If somehow a date transpires, both singles don’t know how to talk to each other, so the date goes badly. Thus both become so discouraged that they stop dating altogether. The end.
Mom’s dating advice
Recently, my son broke up with his first girlfriend. After listening to sappy songs on a loop, he came to me for dating advice. My sole dating experience ended in marriage, so I have a 100% success rate. So listen up Singles!
Like with success in life, love begins with an opportunity. You first have to find an opportunity to meet someone. If there’s none, you make one. A lot of it is by chance. You’re lucky if you’re a man who lives near a Sephora.
Traditionally, there are common places to meet a Potential Mate: Home, School, Church, Work, Stores, Gym, Sports, and Hobbies. As a bachelor navigates these places regularly, he is bound to encounter many singles with similar backgrounds or interests.
The school, church, store, gym are usually in your neighborhood. While your Work, Gym, Sports, and Hobbies can be farther from home, which expands your radius of possible new encounters.
In Silicon Valley, singles pay a fee to join a club that meets regularly. There are clubs for pickle ball and rock climbing, and if you want to ache your knees, there’s run club. Doing an activity appeals to many singles because it staves off awkwardness when they can’t converse. You stay active even if you feign an interest in pickle ball when you’re really just there to meet girls.
It’s important to follow your interests. If you’re so boring that you don’t have one, then find one! You need many interests to be interesting. What do you like to do? What do you want to learn? What gets you excited?
Put down your phones, stop your gaming, and go outside and do things! Try mountain biking or snowboarding. Watch a play, take an art class, learn hip-hop, see a standup, or be a meme and run a marathon in Japan while getting your MBA. Join Meetups on every conceivable incomprehensible mild interest.
Meeting a Potential Mate also requires timing. Both of you must be free and eligible to marry. You don’t want to break a law or Commandment. Even if you’re both unmarried, your Potential Mate must also be willing to date. Otherwise, you’re back to pickleball.
After you’ve spent rent money on several dates, you think, “I guess this can be The One” but your relationship still needs time to grow. Lots of waiting in line time. Lots of trying not to argue on who’s right. Lots of fake laughing at his cringe jokes. Realness doesn’t happen online or with a few dates. You both need to spend time together in various situations to get to know each other to truly see if he’s a crybaby or if she glues spiders to her lashes.
If you both decide to date exclusively, you both need to put in the work to make it work. It seems unfair that Men often have to do the pursuing and trying to make it work. But Women have to give birth. So….I see no problem.
Men, you need to learn to talk to your Girl! Let her know you see her and hear her, and she’ll pretend you’re cool. Take care of her, show her you will protect her, and she’ll pay you back in undying devotion. If you want to be Her Man, then you have to man up.
Love is not for the weak.
Ivy is a lawyer turned columnist. See the latest Silicon Valley books @IvyDigest on Instagram or YouTube.