The pandemic caused a ‘dating recession,’ new Stanford study says

The COVID-19 pandemic left an additional 13.3 million Americans single by 2022, according to a new study conducted by Stanford sociology professor Michael Rosenfeld.
The research shows that the pandemic did more than fuel an economic recession — which was “mercifully brief,” according to Bloomberg — it also caused a social recession that Americans have yet to recover from.
This social recession has greatly impacted the dating lives of Americans under 40.
According to Bloomberg, “For millions, dating and other social activity never recovered, with effects that aren’t just personal and psychological but economic and perhaps even political.”
It’s unsurprising that our social lives took a hit at the height of the pandemic. But, according to Bloomberg, “The data also show Americans’ social lives haven’t bounced back in a measurable way from 2022 or even 2021.”
Last year, the U.S Surgeon General declared that Americans were in an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation.”
“Loneliness and social isolation increase the risk for premature death by 26% and 29% respectively,” The Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory said, noting that the “mortality impact” of loneliness is similar to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.
According to a 2024 study from the American Psychiatric Association, “one in three Americans feels lonely every week.”
When those polled were asked about their their loneliness before the pandemic, 43% said that “their levels of loneliness had not changed,” 25% said that they felt more lonely and 23% said they were less lonely.
But according to Bloomberg, adults are spending less time per week “socializing and communicating” even if they don’t think they are.
In 2003, adults spent on average 5.5 hours a week socializing. That number dropped to 4.5 in 2019.
In 2021 — “Covid’s deadliest year,” Bloomberg noted — adults, on average, spent four hours a week socializing. That number has stayed the same in 2023, implying that adults’ social lives still haven’t recovered from the pandemic, the study found.
This trend has, unsurprisingly, impacted the dating lives of single people. The less you go out and socialize with friends, the more difficult it is meet new people in general — much less a potential romantic partner.
According to a 2024 Forbes Health Survey, “the top (places) to find dates” are:
That list is acutely different than similar lists created in the past, when most couples met through socializing and/or going out. According to Statista, the way most couples met in 1995 — far before online dating was the norm — were:
It’s worth noting that dating apps, while popular, are by no means the perfect way to meet a romantic partner. According to Pew Research Center, only 1-in-10 “partnered adults met their current significant other through a dating site or app.”
The increase of singles isn’t just attributed to adults’ loneliness and lack of a social life, but to the pandemic in general. Rosenfeld reran a survey he conducted in 2017 to assess the status of casual relationships in 2020.
According to Bloomberg, “The exercise revealed that millions of informal relationships fell apart, even as married and cohabitating couples survived the pandemic largely intact.”
But the most surprising results stemmed from 2022, when Rosenfeld ran the same survey again. He found that “that despite the mass vaccine rollout, even more people were alone and not dating.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 46.4% of American adults 18 and over were single in 2023 — or 117.6 million people.
Rosenfeld noted that the pandemic was “especially brutal on the social lives of young people” — and they’re still experiencing difficulties because of it.
“The ability to form and sustain romantic relationships requires muscle memory and experience that some of our young people don’t have,” Rosenfeld told Bloomberg. “The pandemic robbed them of crucial years of socialization.”
The impact of the “dating recession” goes beyond learning about relationship formation — according to Rosenfeld, when young single people procrastinate finding a romantic partner, they’ll “continue to delay traditional adult milestones.”
According to Bloomberg, the percentage of adults who have completed the following milestones has sharply declined:
The delay of more expensive milestones, such as owning a home or living with a child, could be attributed to the economic challenges of being single. As Bloomberg pointed out, being single is “more expensive.”
Boston University sociology professor Deborah Carr told Bloomberg that single people “don’t have economies of scale,” like “splitting the rent and other expenses, sharing health insurance or chipping in for a down payment.”
“The longer you’re in that state, the more it can erode your savings,” Carr said.
And the data shows that most singles are choosing to stay in that single state, according to The Hill. U.S. Census data shows that the average age for a groom in 2022 was 30; 28 for women. In comparison, the average age for grooms in 2000 was roughly 26 and for brides, 25.
As The Deseret News previously reported, beyond a pandemic-fueled dating recession, young people are staying single because of “economic stability, religious demographic shifts, the threat of divorce and having other priorities which take precedence over starting a family.”
According to Maxwell Poyser, head of marketing at a date coaching, matchmaking and events company called Fern Connections, younger generations “hide behind a screen.”
“You almost don’t see a need to go out and meet people in person,” she told Bloomberg. “They don’t know what they’re missing out on. They have nothing to compare it to.”