Only about one in three unmarried young Americans is actively dating, according to a major new national study. Financial strain, low confidence, and emotional burnout are combining to produce what researchers are calling a “dating recession” for adults in their prime relationship years.
The gap between wanting love and pursuing it
The 2026 report examines contemporary dating trends using the 2025 National Dating Landscape Survey, a nationally representative sample of 5,275 unmarried young adults ages 22, 35 in the United States. Researchers focused mostly on the dating experiences of those single young adults who expect to marry, 86% of the sample.
That wide gap between aspiration and action is the report’s central finding.
When asked how often they were dating, only 31% of young adults, a quarter of women (26%) and a little more than a third of men (36%), reported that they were active daters, defined as dating once a month or more.
By contrast, three-quarters of women (74%) and nearly two-thirds of men (64%) reported that they had not dated, or had dated only a few times, in the last year.
The State of Our Unions report is an annual report by the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University and the Institute for Family Studies on the health of marriage and family life in America. Lead author Alan Hawkins, an affiliated scholar of the Wheatley Institute, and his colleagues drew on the survey to argue that many young adults are experiencing a dating recession during their prime dating years.
Most young adults are not dating much, and many are struggling with significant barriers to initiating dating relationships and pursuing their desire to one day marry and have a family.
Money is the biggest obstacle, but not the only one
52% of young adults named insufficient money as the biggest obstacle to dating. Lack of confidence (49%) followed close behind, with the same proportion admitting it gets in the way of dating. Bad past dating experiences ranked third, cited by 48% of respondents.
Contemporary dating is often centered on commercial activities, and young adults frequently feel they cannot afford to date in that way.
Half of single Americans say they are going on fewer dates or choosing less expensive activities because of rising costs, according to BMO’s 2026 Real Financial Progress Index.
A single date costs Gen Z adults an average of $205, according to BMO, making dating a meaningful share of annual income for young workers. Americans are tracking their spending more closely across almost every category of life, and dating is no exception.
Dating confidence is also low, with only about 1 in 3 young adults expressing faith in their dating skills, and 49% admitting that lack of confidence gets in the way of dating.
The report notes that many young adults endorse traditional goals for dating but simply do not feel equipped to act on them.
Emotional burnout compounds the retreat
Dating resilience is low among young adults, with only about a quarter (28%) reporting that they can stay positive after a bad date or relationship setback. Nearly half of young adults say bad dating experiences in the past get in the way of current dating, with equal numbers agreeing that difficult breakups have made them more reluctant to begin new relationships.
Apps, long seen as the solution to the meeting problem, do not appear to be closing the gap. Nearly two-thirds of adults aged 18, 29 (65%) had used online dating sites or apps, and this youngest group of adults was also the most likely to be current users (16%), according to a 2025 SSRS Opinion Panel survey. More recently, the 2026 SSRS poll found that only about half of adults aged 18, 29 (51%) had used such platforms, with just 10% reporting current use. The pattern of stepping back from daily communication with potential partners tracks with broader behavioral shifts researchers have noted in how younger Americans initiate and maintain social connection.
What researchers say needs to change
The report authors argue that young adults need effective road maps that guide them to and through dating experiences that will connect their marital expectations to actual unions. They say this requires a concerted effort to teach healthy dating skills, something that currently receives little attention from the general culture or the relationship education field.
Brian Willoughby, an author of the report and a Fellow at the Wheatley Institute, said that most young adults across America endorse relatively traditional purposes for dating and do not express an overt fear of commitment, but many lack the needed skills for dating and the resilience to handle the natural ups and downs of relationship starts and stops along the journey of dating.
About half (51%) of survey respondents reported they were single but interested in starting a relationship, though this was much more the case for men (60%) than for women (47%).
That asymmetry, the report suggests, may itself be a source of friction in the dating market, with men and women calibrating differently when it comes to readiness and initiative. The full State of Our Unions 2026 report is available through the Institute for Family Studies.
