The lessons of online dating’s failure

Thanks to the ironclad memory of YouTube, anyone can watch a commercial that aired in 2006 for the online dating service eHarmony. The website was a sensation in the mid-2000s and one of the first internet dating tools to market itself as a viable marriage maker. Its creator, a Christian theologian and counselor named Neil Clark Warren, appears in the ad, looking and sounding every bit like a pastor cheering on two of his congregants toward wedded bliss.

Twenty years ago, the promise of online dating was that single men and women could skip the overwhelming uncertainty of chance encounters and find someone who was truly compatible. A soulmate could be found, not just looked for. Two decades later, online dating apps are now the norm. But soulmates—and marriages—are not.

The broad disappointment of online dating feels more significant than a quirky footnote in American culture. For one, nearly everyone—men and women, urban and rural, right and left—seems united in bemoaning its failures. For another, America’s declining marriage and fertility rates are almost certainly at least a partial product of this failure. Modern life’s migration to the internet means that technology’s failure to facilitate things like marriage has broad and likely multigenerational consequences. Ask yourself what seems more likely right now: a Generation Alpha resurgence in matrimony and childbearing or just more internet use?

So why has online dating not fulfilled its promises? One reason may be the paradox of choice. Many observers have noticed that the streaming era has apparently created audiences who have access to everything imaginable but very little interest in 99 percent of it. Instead, Netflix and Spotify users tend to consume the same media over and over again. Similar dilemmas could happen when streaming potential mates. An infinite amount of choice combined with broad freedom to choose sounds liberating but instead becomes paralyzing.

Another reason may be that the internet is not that conducive to the highest experiences of life. The great promise of online dating was to help singles overcome the problems posed by limited choice and the inefficient (and often difficult) trial and error that in-person dating presents. Certainly, this has worked for some. But the overall verdict seems to be that a generation has been conditioned to hide behind their digital technology. Younger Americans report more difficulty with friendship, major life transitions, and even things like getting a driver’s license than their parents or grandparents. Are these things just that much more difficult than they were 20 years ago? Or has the contained, frictionless experience of digital life made encounters with offline reality feel much harder?

Online dating is an interesting test case for how well religious conservatives can diagnose their surroundings. On the surface, these don’t look like religiously or politically relevant questions, just the warp and woof of modern life. But looks are deceptive.

Consider the relevance of how men and women are polarizing away from one another. Men are breaking to the right, with the extremes occupied by sex- and power-obsessed “manosphere” influencers who either ridicule or pornify the fairer sex. Women, meanwhile, are breaking in the opposite direction. Whether it’s the phenomenon of the “single woke female” or the recent divorce-celebrating turn in women’s publishing, feminine pop culture projects a strong alienation from men, marriage, and homemaking. It’s hardly breaking news that men and women may not totally get each other. But could increasing resentment between the sexes be a consequence of our culture’s stagnant singleness? And might that unwanted loneliness be a further consequence of an overreliance on technology to solve what is ultimately a human need, not a technical one?

The good news is that whenever technological salvation fails, an opportunity for something better usually appears. Conservative Christians who know that human beings are designed for something greater than seamless efficiency and maximal choice have an advantage over our secular neighbors on this issue. This doesn’t necessarily mean throwing out online dating. It can obviously do what it offers. But it’s still true that friendship, membership in a church and community, and in-person camaraderie offer the most reliable path toward wedding bells.

Start with friendship by helping ourselves and our children normalize conversation and eye contact and resisting the temptation to always retreat into devices. Meaningful membership in a local church might limit our freedom in some ways, but it also provides a literally holy context in which to get to know people and practice the art of relationship.

These practices aren’t just quaint “hacks” for a crunchier or less distracted family life. They are theological and even political habits that just might offer a way out of frustration, paralysis, and the battle of the sexes.