(WWJ) — Valentine’s Day is a time to show your love and appreciation for that special someone in your life.
But for many people, particularly those from Generation Z, the world of modern dating has not been easy.
On a new Daily J podcast, WWJ’z Zach Clark “swipes right” to find out how dating apps have turned the dating world on its head.
While apps like Bumble, Tinder, Hinge and others have been around for years, they’ve certainly become more prevalent over the last decade or so, and definitely found a new level since the onset of the pandemic.
On top of the apps that put our dating lives at the fingertips of others reading a brief bio and scrolling through a few pictures, Dr. Gerald Shiner — Chief of Psychiatry at DMC Sinai-Grace Hospital in Detroit — says social media also adds another layer of pressure.
“When you meet someone, or if you’re gonna get ‘fixed up’ and introduced to someone, before they meet you, they’re gonna look you up on social media. And they’ll see how you look, how you dress, what you have to say for yourself,” Shiner said. “So the stakes of the dating game are a little bit higher, and that all contributes to making things more difficult.”
Gen Z has grown up with technology and social media being a part of their lives since the time they were young, so dating apps aren’t necessarily a foreign concept. But the pandemic that disrupted our lives certainly was.
“I feel like the pandemic just kinda ratcheted up pressure for people to go find ‘the love of their life,’ so to speak,” said WWJ’s Luke Sloan. “It made the stakes a little bit higher because we found out what it was like to not have anybody around and people who were single during the pandemic might have struggled extra hard if they really wanted a person, especially in a quarantine or lockdown period.”
Are you subscribed to The Daily J? If not, do it now for FREE on the Audacy app or wherever you get your podcasts, and get more in-depth audio stories like this one delivered to your phone or tablet every Monday through Friday.