Gen Zers hide behind screens. It’s affecting their dating lives

When Jayden started catching feelings for one of her friends, she immediately jumped to the worst-case scenario.

“If this doesn’t work out, you know what a breakup feels like, and you know what being made to feel like a fool feels like, and I really don’t want to endure that again,” said Jayden, a 25-year-old living in St. Petersburg, Florida, who gave her first name to protect her privacy.

But after he kept pursuing her, she realized how secure she actually felt in what is now a relationship. It was just her fear of what might go wrong that was holding her back.

“People for millions of years have been facing that exact fear,” said Paul Eastwick, professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, and director of the attraction and relationships research laboratory. “What if I’m rejected? What if I disclose something intense and personal and it’s thrown back in my face?”

Today, young people are facing professional and financial pressures, high rates of loneliness and depression, and now fears of a relationship derailing their lives.

In the United States, only about 1 in 3 young men and 1 in 5 young women between the ages of 22 and 35 said they were confident in their ability to approach a romantic interest, according to a study from Brigham Young University’s Wheatley Institute in Provo, Utah, and the nonprofit Institute for Family Studies.

The popularity of social media — where everyone posts their personal business online — has turned rejection into a public spectacle, beyond your friend group, school, community or neighborhood.

However, dating and intimacy require taking some risks. That’s scary and always has been. But the more Gen Z cocoons to “protect” themselves from outside factors the more they close themselves off to the possibility of connection — which is an antidote to the loneliness epidemic.

“We learn a ton about ourselves when we have romantic relationships, and I think learning to have a good relationship is a really important task,” said Richard Weissbourd, an American child and family psychologist and senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “Whether it’s romantic or not, just learning how to have very close relationships is one of the best things about being human.”

Members of Gen Z, who are all digital natives, know that any of their actions could end up on social media — whether you were sniped on video or someone decided to air out your drama on TikTok. No wonder the younger generation, from age 29 down to teenagers, is scared of doing anything that could be embarrassing — it’s just too risky.

Gabriel Rubin, a professor of justice studies at Montclair State University in New Jersey, said he was shocked by the lack of privacy students said they had on social media.

“Some of the things they say make me think, ‘How could you not be overthinking every single thing all the time?’” Rubin said. “With all the judgment, all the comparison, this flood of information at you — and you’re just like 20 years old.”

Gen Z perceives more dangers in life than previous generations, Rubin found in a study for which he conducted 108 interviews from November 2022 to this past April. His research, yet to be published, was presented in December at the Society for Risk Analysis’ 2025 SRA Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.

Risk is not black-and-white; things are not simply safe or dangerous. Weighing risks is part of life, but younger generations are having a harder time grasping that concept.

Risk aversion is a behavioral tendency to avoid taking risks as much as possible in favor of a guaranteed outcome, even if that decision results in a smaller payoff than the riskier option.

When it comes to dating, Rubin said Gen Zers are steering clear of anything risky that could lead to love.

“They said, ‘You don’t want to strike out with a girl, or you don’t want to have a bad day because people might trash you on social media or make fun of you,’” Rubin said, recalling the conversation. “Why get involved?”

Damian Bertrand, a 21-year-old reporter in South Carolina, said he is not only worried about embarrassing himself but also accidentally making someone uncomfortable if he were to approach them.

“The biggest reason why people are being risk-averse is so they can’t make other people uncomfortable,” Bertrand said. “The No. 1 thing I don’t want to do in the dating scene is to ruin someone’s day because I asked them to go on a date.”

Jayden said she’s had a couple guys interested in her come up to her, not take the hint that she’s not interested, and make her feel uncomfortable. But most of the time, if someone approaches her with confidence and respect, she doesn’t have a problem with it — in fact, she thinks more men should approach women in public. Why aren’t they?

Maybe it’s because the anxious generation, as social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at NYU Stern School of Business, calls them, fears doing the wrong thing.

“It becomes hard to say anything, to be yourself, to make mistakes, to date, to talk to people in an office,” Rubin said. “You know too much about how people view you and how you view yourself.”

It’s not just about unlimited access to other people’s information but also the overwhelming amount of bad, negative and scary information on social media.

Weissbourd, the Harvard psychologist, found that this generation’s feelings of dystopia could cause them to throw in the towel on relationships.

In his conversations with members of Gen Z, Weissbourd found many who felt a relationship would destabilize or derail them, primarily because they don’t feel ready for it.

However, sometimes taking the risk is the right move, he noted.

There are some positive aspects to Gen Zers’ approach to risky behaviors, such as lower rates of teen pregnancy and a focus on protecting their peace and work-life balance. But when it reaches a point where young people become too absorbed with their own emotional state, it can lead to some negatives, according to Weissbourd.

“The inclination to turn inward, it can diminish your availability to new relationships and good relationships,” Weissbourd said.

When Jayden first moved to St. Petersburg after graduating from college, she said she was stuck in a loop of bad date after bad date, all set up on the apps.

Dating apps allowed men to approach her without taking any risk. Depending on the app, a user only matches when both parties present interest or gets to decide whether they are interested in someone who has already shown interest, easing the tension of a flat-out rejection.

Jayden felt like guys were bolder when hitting on her over the apps but didn’t show that same confidence in public. In person, these guys didn’t measure up to how they acted online, she said.

With dating apps, the public act of approaching someone is cut out of the equation.

But with this illusion of ease comes a lack of interaction, which is an essential part of forming relationships, according to Eastwick. With interaction, you can reduce the tendency to judge people primarily on their presentation.

Instead, you start to find people who are appealing to you based on more than physical attraction alone — quirks and habits included, Eastwick said.

“We have to interact with people on multiple occasions with the ability to opt out if you don’t blow me away within the first couple of minutes,” Eastwick said.

Even the word “relationship” can mean something a lot more serious to Gen Z than it does to other people, said Harry Reis, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester in New York.

“People will essentially do what used to be called a relationship or a date and just not call it that,” Reis said.

A situationship, a term tossed around a lot when talking about Gen Z dating and what Reis is referring to, has all the characteristics of a relationship but lacks the stamp of commitment that causes some people so much anxiety.

Experts and Gen Z alike say that the younger generation still yearns for connection. Facilitating and fostering connections with one another has value.

“Most people want intimacy, the sexual intimacy, the warmth and sense of belonging that you have when you’re socializing with other people,” Reis said. “We socialize because that’s part of what our species is designed to do. The desire to socialize, I don’t think it is any weaker than it ever was.”

Parents and grandparents, and even schools, do “almost nothing” to prepare the younger generation for love, Weissbourd said.

Sex education in the United States is focused on abstinence and what Weissbourd called “disaster prevention” rather than relationship development. And, because of a lack of strong communities, it’s harder for young people to connect with each other — off the apps.

The desire to make connections won’t go away. Young people are just finding it harder to make them, whether that’s because of fear, a lack of knowledge or other priorities.

Weissbourd encourages young people to be open to being vulnerable and continue to try forming meaningful connections.

“How we reform different kinds of communities where young people have natural opportunities to meet each other is a really urgent and vital issue,” Weissbourd said.

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