Good morning of Dating App Sunday; the biggest day of the year for dating apps; defined as the most new profiles created and the most messages sent on a single day.
Coming off holidays spent single and a resolution for connection in the New Year, this peak usage day kicks off the most active dating app season from the first Sunday after the New Year through Valentine’s Day. (source)
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why dating seems so challenging in a time when we have unprecedented access to other people through dating apps and the answer I see given most often is the paradox of choice.
The theory that if humans are presented with many options, it leads to decision paralysis and they ultimately tend to choose nothing at all. This study was originally done with jam and when presented with 24 jams, 3% of shoppers purchased. When there were 6 jams, 30% of shoppers purchased. As an aside - we’re taking research on fruit spread purchasing and extrapolating it to the choice of a human partner, which in and of itself is a bit of an eyeroll.
Something has always felt off to me about this as an explanation for the crisis of modern dating; paradox of choice would make sense if people were just not committing, paralysed by the amount of perceived options. The paradox of choice implies a sense of abundance and all of the language I see around dating is rooted in scarcity.
If we were living in a paradox of choice, wouldn’t people still be going on a lot of dates? Having a lot of sex? Having shorter term relationships?
Both data and general sentiment are pointing to the opposite:
“Modern Dating feels like taking a hot shower in hell” (Vogue)
“Is Dating a Total Nightmare for You? You’re not alone” (New York Mag)
The WSJ reported in August that we’re in a sex recession and most notably: 24% of young people ages 18-29, have not had sex in the last year. (which is double the amount from 2010).
Scott Galloway summarizes on Diary of a CEO podcast that men have to swipe 200 times on dating apps to get a single date.
None of this sounds abundant to me.
And I’ll concede; I’m sure the paradox of choice is at least part of the problem with dating apps and choosing who to initially meet from your matches, especially for women. But it feels like the wrong lid for the pot; it kind of fits but it doesn’t fully click.
And then I heard Dr. K, a Harvard trained psychiatrist who specializes in addictive behavior, speaking on a podcast and it clicked.
He explained that each day we only have a set amount of dopamine each day; you can think about it as the juice on a lemon.
We only have a lemon’s worth of juice per day. And when you look at your phone first thing in the morning, you squeeze all of that juice out, really hard, all at once. So your internally created dopamine is gone for the day.
Once you’ve depleted your internal stores of dopamine at the beginning of the day, your baseline dopamine level is set really high; and now you need to extract it from external sources like scrolling, sugar, gambling, shopping, exercising, etc. to keep you at that baseline that you established in the morning.
Here’s where it gets really fascinating - you need the chemical of dopamine to create the feeling of lust or like for another person and we literally don’t have the chemical building blocks to create that feeling.
So people are going on dates, depleted of dopamine and then reporting that they feel nothing. They feel neutral. They’re flatlining.
Dopamine is required to translate arousal into desire.
With depleted dopamine:
Physical attraction doesn’t convert into wanting
Sexual thoughts feel distant or intellectual
Desire feels muted or absent
Touch may feel pleasant but not compelling
Dopamine addiction and depletion makes far more sense to me as an explanation of what we’re seeing in the dating market than paradox of choice.
I spent the month of August in Ibiza, a small island off the coast of Spain, known for its party scene and beautiful beaches; lesser known for its spiritual side which is what brought me there. I watched as people spent their entire time at the beach rolling from one FaceTime call to another (with no headphones no less). I watched families sit through entire dinners all separately scrolling on their devices, not saying a single word to each other.
Upon my return to New York City in September, I watched people walk up the subway steps, so engrossed in their phones, that they would just stop mid step, blocking the path for everyone else without even realizing it. When I look around in public spaces, at the ubiquity with which people are on a device, I increasingly see eyes glazed over, mouth partially agape. It’s eerily similar to the people in places like San Francisco and Vancouver who have taken fentanyl and are frozen in place, partially bent over.
I think we’re all far more dopamine addicted than we realize.
I know I am.
This is how I know I’m really addicted: when social media is deleted from my phone, which is most of the time, I’ll still pick up my phone constantly and just bounce from weather app, to Robinhood, to Spotify, to my horoscope app, looking for something, anything, somewhere.
So this Dating App Sunday, maybe the most radical thing we can do in the pursuit of love… is stop chasing dopamine and start protecting it and cultivating it, like the crucial magic that it is.
Next week, I’m writing about the other key driver I see behind our modern dating crisis. Make sure you’re subscribed!
Protect and Cultivate! Internalizing this right.now. 💕
As I read this first thing when I wake up …..