Dating is a supplement
Dating can no longer solve intimacy needs. Digital dating and for-greed companies (and for-greed people, for that matter) have ruined dating, pretty much irrevocably.

Relationships are a niche
Even if the majority of people want relationships, relationships remain unreliable and unfulfilling. They require a lot of time, a lot of effort, all just to have no promised payoff. Relationships are therefore are a niche solution. Not an actual solution.

Dating, nightlife, hookup, relationships are High Investment, Low Return
These all require enormous time, money, emotional bandwidth. Despite this, they yield low returns for the majority. They also yield no promise of return, meaning they are fundamentally games of chance.

Economics ruined the game
This is the result of a society that prioritizes economics. Prioritizing economics will mean economics is the priority. The modern world thinks they can prioritize economics while also making romance or fun a priority. They would argue that they can juggle all three. One honest glance at this circumstance will show you that people are not juggling anything.

Hookups are the only positive that ever existed
Western culture, in its expansive failure, managed to at least make hookups. The one piece of fun or intrigue that was in the whole game. But Western culture is so bad overall, now even hookup is mostly ruined. Congratulations. By proxy, all the other cultural and economic flop wrecked hookup in the radius.

The only prudent path forward
Decriminalizing paid intimacy or passporting out are the only realistic solutions going forward.

Dating, relationships, and nightlife are essentially nothing more than low-odds gambling. (Or just plain gambling, even under the best circumstances.)

Rationally speaking, dating is just as failed of a concept as putting people in mass student debt for no promise of a job.

Society is using these models, which place individuals under the obligation of heavy investment while putting them in a game of chance. These are models that will not stand the test of time in any enlightened or evolving society.

Europe has already made great strides in the direction of addressing and fixing this.

Among developed Western society, North America is still performing dismally here.

Statistics

1. A 2026 dating study, by Brigham Young University of 5,275 adults, has found that only 26% of women who are aged 22-35 in the USA are active daters (at least one date per month).
   
2. A 2024 Tinder study found 91% of men and 94% of women see dating as “more difficult than ever”.
   
3. USA marriage rates are at or near historic lows, reaching 5.1 per 1,000 people in 2020. Only about 51% of U.S. adults are married, a sharp decline from 72% in 1960.
   
4. Mozilla and Consumers International found Tinder’s opaque, unfair pricing algorithm can charge users up to 5X more for same service. On average, across the six countries investigated, 30-49 year-olds were charged 65.3% more than 18-29 year-olds.