As Valentine’s Day creeps closer, I find myself in a hilariously contradictory spot: I’m a proud dating-app abstainer, who occasionally succumbs to the second-hand dopamine, voyeuristic pleasure of swiping through my friends’ Tinders. I once even went on a three-hour walk with a friend who created a Hinge account solely to evangelize about why we should all delete it. Call me a hypocrite if you want — maybe that contradiction perfectly sums up our generation’s complicated relationship with dating apps.

Here’s a sobering fact: about a third of never-married single adults say they’ve never been in a committed relationship. Meanwhile, the median age for first marriages is now 28 for women and 30 for men — meaning we’re staying single longer, dating more casually and somehow ending up less satisfied with the whole process.

It’s easy to point fingers at social media — Instagram for its highlight reels that ruin our self-esteem, TikTok for destroying our attention spans or dating apps for reducing us to trading cards. But I think it goes deeper than that. We’ve changed our core ideas about how much we owe each other in relationships.

In modern dating, everything feels relentlessly transactional. Swipe right to opt in, unmatch to opt out, “define the relationship” like we’re hashing out terms of service. We’re taught that we owe nothing to anyone we haven’t explicitly chosen, and even then, those choices are completely revocable. Every interaction comes with a convenient escape hatch.

But this isn’t just about dating. We’ve built a culture that puts “boundaries” above bonds and “self-care” above showing up for one another. We don’t owe good friends emotional labor any longer. We’re so worried about seeming “entitled” that we’ve forgotten to be entitled to the most basic, critical thing: human connection.

So we’re now left trying to find life partners in an emotional vacuum. When your potential spouse has to serve as your entire support network — therapist, best friend, co-parent and soulmate all rolled into one — it’s no wonder we feel paralyzed by choice. It’s an impossible job description for anyone to fulfill.

I think about friends who found love “organically.” They met through classmates, clubs or, inarguably the best way, mutual friends. Their relationships often thrived because they were built on shared communities and support networks. They didn’t need their partner to be everything for them because they already had other meaningful connections in place.

That’s why, this Valentine’s Day, I’m suggesting we all give “dating organic” a try. Yes, that means meeting people in real life, but it’s also about cultivating the kind of rich social soil where those relationships can take root and grow. Go to that club event you’ve been curious about. Show up for your boring department’s mixers. Grab coffee with your friend’s friend who’s also nerdy about German Idealism or underground jazz. Laze around all day in Pointdexter Coffee and look confused. 

Even better, be the kind of friend who makes introductions. Host gatherings. Create spaces where people can meet each other. Essentially, build the community you’d like to date in.

I get the draw of Hinge, Tinder and the rest: the dopamine rush is real, and it’s so tempting to think an algorithm can spit out our perfect match. But maybe what we crave isn’t more matches — it’s more meaningful connections. Maybe the path to “the one” isn’t about refining our filters, but about being better friends, neighbors and classmates to each other.

So this Valentine’s Day, rather than updating your Hinge prompt, ask that interesting person from your English 114 seminar if they want to grab coffee. Or better yet, organize a dinner party at your place. Who knows? You might find love in the best way: slowly, naturally, supported by a community and grounded in real moments — not just a hopeful swipe.

After all, the best relationships don’t start with a right-swipe. They grow organically — from shared laughter, late-night chats, mutual support networks and a foundation that runs deeper than any match score.

GIA-BAO DAM is a junior in Pauli Murray College majoring in Biomedical Engineering and Statistics and Data Science. She was a staff reporter on the SciTech desk. She can be reached at gia-bao.dam@yale.edu.