dating in 2026

In the age of online dating, actually meeting a guy in person is unheard of. You hear stories about how people's parents met on a chance encounter, through mutual friends, or, and yes this is true it happened with my friend's parents, met performing together at Disney World, but in recent years when was the last time you heard about anything like that happening. Now maybe this whole thing is a me and my friend issue, but the discourse about dating in 2026 I hear online tells me it is not. 

To dissect this we need to find the root of the problem. Online dating. Or going even broader, the internet.

 

The rise of dating apps have made it so people can just scroll through people's profile and decide if they are worthy of their time with one swipe. There is no longer hard work of pursuing somebody, it is a question of if they are attractive enough in their photos to go on a date with. I mean I am guilty of this too, me and my friends get together and go through our hinge profiles and simply decide if we want to swipe right with a group consensus of if they are hot or not. I do not think this is fair, but it is just the way dating has adapted into. The art of meeting somebody out at a bar is dead. 

Now I do not mean to bash anyone who has met their significant other through a dating app, because it is possible, it is just not often I find this works out. The internet alone has desensitized the general public to what people really look like. Scrolling through Instagram you will find 10 models who have enough money to look however they want and people who know how to use photoshop. There is nothing wrong with wanting to look good in how you present yourself on social media, as we were taught when we were younger, "do not believe everything you see online," but it is because of this rise of plastic surgery and editing we have higher expectations for the level of attractiveness in regular people. The internet has also made it so we are more aware about the dangers of the world.

I have a friend who met somebody at a bar, and he invited her to go on a date with him, but she is too scared to go on it. I don't blame her because growing up we have been taught the very important phrase "stranger danger," and the meaning behind the words are even more present in our lives because we have access to the horrors that can occur via the news, which we always have access to thanks to the internet. Now I do agree it is important to learn about these bad things that happen when you are not careful, but is there a point where you start missing out on life because you are too careful?