Young people open up on love
Survey suggests millennials, Gen Z serious about dating; claims of ‘sex drought’ not true
Sure, an onslaught of statistics and think pieces claim millennial and Generation Z daters aren’t having much sex. But younger daters say they’re doing just fine in the bedroom.
That’s according to a new survey helmed by the dating site Match that finds sex may be only one piece in the puzzle of romantic fulfilment for young people.
“What we’re finding is that young people are interested in love and are taking it quite seriously,” said Justin Garcia, a sex researcher who directs the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University and advises Match.com.
The Match Singles in America survey, now in its ninth year, polled 5,001 U.S. adults and found that a vast majority of young people want long-term commitment and have active sex lives.
Seventy per cent of Gen Z daters and 63 per cent of millennials are looking to go steady, according to the survey. And the vast majority of them are optimistic in their search for love.
Older daters who have been on the scene for a while might scoff at the idea, but young people seem certain in matters of the heart.
“People are taking dating seriously, and they’re taking the role of relationships in their lives seriously,” said Garcia. “How are you going to fit a partner in your life?”
Three-quarters of Gen Z daters and 69 per cent of millennial daters believe that they’ll find the
love they’re looking for. That’s compared with 46 per cent of respondents in other generations.
Boston College philosophy professor Kerry Cronin, who gained prominence after offering her students extra credit for going on dates, cautions that this statistic may decline the older a millennial gets.
“Because they ended up with this culture without a lot of dating coaching, no dating scripts, no dating culture, they’re scrambling behind the scenes,” she said.
In her experience, she said, a lot of millennials feel as if they missed opportunities earlier in life for a great love connection.
But it’s worth noting that the survey purposely did not specify what that love looks like, Garcia said.
“There’s a whole generation of people who are appreciating the extent of relationship diversity that’s possible, and we’re seeing more people being open and assertive about what kind of relationship they want,” he said in an interview.
Young daters are generally more open to diverse kinds of relationships, such as consensual nonmonogamy and polyamory, he said.
For anyone worried about the national sex drought in the U.S., the survey found little to worry about.
Most younger singles reported having sex in the past seven days prior to being surveyed.
Any suspicion that respondents are over-reporting is unwarranted, Garcia said. “For the most part, the numbers tend to be pretty accurate,” he said.
The emergence of casual hookup apps — Tinder and Grindr chief among them — certainly makes the proposition of a onenight (or multiple-night) stand all the more appealing.
“The dating thing has become where people have positioned themselves around the hookup app culture and trying to find the unicorn, and the person who’s going to not ghost,” Cronin said.
But these apps are so normalized, said Garcia, that the reasons why people are using them tend to blend together.
“Sometimes it’s for relationships and sometimes it’s just for friends, and it’s a way for other people to connect for more possible romantic and sexual connections,” he said.
“And often, if it’s more sexual — like Grindr or Tinder — it’s with the hope for a relationship.” But they don’t want just sex. If anything, it appears as if the emergence of services that facilitate casual sex are nudging loveseekers toward looking for commitment.
Garcia agrees. The hunt for sex and romance, he said, are not mutually exclusive — and daters still tend to be pretty serious about the search for love.
Only about one tenth of young daters (15 per cent of men and eight per cent of women) are casual daters.
What, if anything is holding singles back from looking for longterm romance?
After all, dating now is a far cry from generations past, where the courtship process was brief and couples married a lot earlier in relationships.
For some, it’s the need to be stable in their career and finances. One in five respondents want to reach a certain socioeconomic bracket, while about less than a quarter of respondents (23 per cent) want to achieve success in careers before committing to love.
But a plurality of those surveyed — about 40 per cent — want to find self-love and selfactualization before they find love in another person.
“You could say that that’s an indication of fear of intimacy or worry, but I think when we take it all together, that people are thoughtful — especially young people.” he said.
But Cronin isn’t so sure. Young people’s reluctance to date, she said, may be due to the uncertainty and vulnerability of putting yourself out there.
“In most other areas of your life, when you work hard, you’re going to succeed,” she said. “Effort correlates to success, and that doesn’t apply in dating.”
“And, so, the difficulty of that for young adults I talk to is that, ‘Why spend my time?’ ” she said.
But if it looks like young people nowadays are taking longer to start coupling up, Garcia said, that may be a good thing.
“That’s a positive sign, said Garcia. “That’s a sign that people are taking dating and relationships seriously. They want commitment. It’s not that there’s any disinterest in relationships or dating or intimacy.”