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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Sean Elling, host of The Gray Area, and today I'm bringing the Today Explained audience a special edition of the show. The Gray Area takes a philosophy-minded look at culture, technology, politics, and the world of ideas.
Each week, we invite a guest to explore a question or topic that matters, from the state of democracy, to the struggle with depression and anxiety, to the nature of identity in the digital age. Each episode looks for nuance and honesty in the most important conversations of our time.
On today's episode, we're diving into dating, and in particular, how the internet has made dating so challenging for Gen Z.
I do believe that most people want to be loved. You know, they want to be seen. It was more that they didn't know how to get there. They didn't feel confident almost in their skills and understanding to make it happen for themselves.
That's coming up.
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Chapter 2: Why is Gen Z retreating from dating?
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This is The Gray Area. I am Sean Illing. My guest today is Christine Emba. She's a writer and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Christine writes about sex, dating, loneliness, gender, religion, social norms, basically all the moral anxieties of modern life.
But really, this is a much broader conversation about why Gen Z is retreating from dating and relationships altogether and how the internet is supercharging all of those trends. I started with the question, Why doesn't Gen Z date anymore?
I hear a couple of things. First, I think, is a general sense of anxiety around interacting with other people. So one of the things that I cited in my New York Times piece was this major survey that came out. It was done by the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institute at BYU. And they did a nationally representative study of Americans ages 22 to 35.
And then they narrowed that down to people who explicitly said that they were interested in relationships or getting married one day and who are currently not married. And they asked about dating. And the first line of the report is, so dark to me. Their like top line conclusion is that we are in a depressed dating economy, which like makes me depressed just to say, frankly.
And then the reasons that people cited for not dating were really just like anxiety-based. First, there was the idea of like money, which speaks to the precariousness. Like dating is expensive. I'm not sure if I have enough money, et cetera, to take people out on dates. But then also like 50% of people
talked about having issues with what the survey described as dating efficacy, which really, when they broke it down, meant that they didn't think that they knew how to or were confident enough to approach someone of the opposite sex. They weren't confident that they could read social cues.
They weren't confident that they could accept rejection and bounce back if they dated someone and it didn't work out. So because of their anxiety, it's exactly the cycle that you stated. They were just opting out of doing it. And I hear a lot of this anxiety when I've gone to college campuses and talked to young people myself too. There's just this worry about getting it wrong.
You mentioned the dating apps. I mean, you would think on the surface That should make dating easier. But again, it's that easiness, right?
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Chapter 3: What factors contribute to dating anxiety among Gen Z?
Oh, my gosh. Which or like how many? Let me think. That one and that one and that one. A bunch of public radio stations. A big newspaper that I can think of. Some sub stacks. So many newsletters. I don't know if they're sub stacks, but like I was trying to count the other day because someone asked me and I think it's like six newsletters at least. Dang. Like a lot. How about you?
Are you in the newsletter camp, too?
All of that, not so much newsletters, a lot of podcasts on Patreon.
Heck yeah.
Which reminds me.
Oh, yeah. You were like, yes, anding me. Okay. You, dear listener, can support this show, Today Explained, and in doing so, support Vox, which makes this show possible by going to vox.com slash members. There's benefits. You get to listen to the show without ads. You get little perks. Check it out. And thank you. We're back with a special drop of the gray area and Christine Emba.
We've been talking about Gen Z dating and relationships.
I think that people really do desire love and companionship and like to be in community with other people, to be with someone else. But doing that is kind of hard, especially if you didn't necessarily learn the skills or have spent a lot of your time isolated. You know, like going out,
putting on the right clothes, figuring out how to talk to girls, say, is kind of a slog and you might get rejected a bunch of times and it feels bad. But in the past, you kind of had to do it if you wanted to have sex or experience some kind of sexual relief. But for men, I think especially, first you could kind of not do it and find a bunch of guys to whine about
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