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Online dating apps struggle as people swear off swiping

Online dating industry in crisis as shares fall and nearly half of all users report negative experiences on the apps

But the episode outlined a deeper issue: dating apps – those social media businesses that were supposed to improve, preview or supplant all manner of personal human interactions – are in crisis. New York magazine’s The Cut confirmed that the trend for celibacy – a “Great Abstaining” – has come “amid any number of moral panics about sex, mainly related to young people … that is, confusingly, entering the discourse just on the heels of peak polyamory”. Laurie Mintz, a University of Florida psychology professor, told the outlet that this was in essence a case of try one, try the other, and rather than detecting a gen Z, neo-Puritan upswing, both were related “to an underlying dissatisfaction with the status quo of sex in relationships for women and a rejection of rigid rules and boundaries around what should occur”.

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