I watch our intake students and thank God I'm not in their shoes. It's a different world entirely.
First thing you need to understand is they've grown up with dating apps as the default. Not a supplement to meeting people in real life, not a backup option. Of course we had this to a significant extent but as you go up the age ladder there was more ‘something else’ as an alternative and a contrast. Apps are the primary way they connect. That changes everything. They're not learning how to approach someone in a bar, read body language, handle rejection in person. They're learning how to curate a profile, how to swipe efficiently, how to manage a dozen conversations at once. It's a skillset, but it's not the same skillset that built relationships for older generations.
Second thing: the expectations are completely different. Young women in that age bracket have been told they can have it all, and they believe it. They want a man who's emotionally available, financially stable, physically attractive, and supportive of their career, all before he's twenty-five. And the young men? They've been told to be sensitive and ambitious and confident and vulnerable, all at once, with no roadmap for how to square those contradictions. Everyone's confused, everyone's performing, and everyone's afraid to admit they don't know what they're doing.
Third thing: the ghosting is endemic. I believe they'll talk for weeks, share intimate details, make plans, and then disappear without a word. Not because they're cruel, but because they've learned that's how the game works. There's always another match, another conversation, another possibility. Commitment feels like a trap when you've been raised on infinite choice. The ones who do manage to form real connections are the ones who've deliberately stepped off the treadmill, who've decided to invest in one person instead of keeping a rotation.
And the sex? It's different too. Porn is their sex education. They've seen more by eighteen than we have seen by thirty and someone say sixty can’t even imagine. They're also more anxious, more prone to performance pressure, more likely to need explicit consent for every step. It's healthier in some ways, more sterile in others. Less mystery, less discovery, more negotiation.
I wouldn't want to be starting out now. But then again, I'm sure they look at us not much more than a decade older and think we had it easy. And maybe we did.