Deep dating is in for 2026

“I don’t want to jinx it, but I have just started seeing this girl who knows how to emotionally regulate,” shares Saachi Malhotra, 23. The Brighton-based communications executive identifies as bisexual and has been single for about two years. ​“On our first date, I talked to her about struggling with finances and she didn’t jump to change the topic. She was actually kind and empathetic, it was refreshing.” You may consider this the bare minimum but many daters in their 20s get stuck in the loop of superficial small talk, unable to move beyond work or what’s on TV, to get to the real stuff.

The receipts prove it too. Recently, Hinge surveyed 30,000 users globally for its 2025 D.A.T.E. report. The platform discovered that Gen Z Hinge daters are 36 per cent more hesitant to strike up a deep conversation on their first date when compared to millennials. But why? ​“This is a generation that grew up online, where every moment can be captured, shared and commented on,” Hinge’s love and connection expert, Moe Ari Brown, tells us. ​“When you live inside that kind of digital fishbowl, it makes sense that vulnerability feels high stakes.” Often, explains Ari-Brown, young daters present as calm and composed to protect themselves.

It’s not that young people don’t care for love. Ironically, they’re craving deeper connections; Hinge’s report shows that 84 per cent of Gen Z daters want to find new ways of building meaningful connections with the people they’re seeing. Even on TikTok, yearning is back. This disparity in what people desire versus what translates in real life is not insurmountable, though.

“Sometimes I struggle to articulate how I feel. Recently, on a first date, I wore a hat that says ​‘romantic at heart’, hoping it shows that I’m sensitive and open,” explains banker Anwar Khan, 26, who identifies as a straight man. ​“It did the opposite. She made a joke about how it was performative, and that brought my guard up.” Perhaps, instead of ​“signalling” their feelings, Gen Z should actually communicate vulnerability in conversation. The Always Do What You Should Do sticker on your laptop and a weathered copy of bell hooks’ All About Love peeking out your jacket pocket aren’t enough to to make that special connection.

Yes, instead of relying on lore-laden objects or a chicly orchestrated digital footprint to make an impression, do it the old school way. A good chat is always welcome. No one expects you to breathe rizz the moment you start talking, and no one wants that either. Gen Z isn’t the generation that lusts after a know-it-all; rather, it adores nerdy, and awkward. If you’re on edge, acknowledge it. ​“On our first date, I was nervous and forgot all my conversation topics. I told my partner, we laughed, and it eased the tension,” Charlotte*, a 25-year-old straight woman, recalls. Admitting that you aren’t infallible, becomes the icebreaker to go deeper.

You don’t need to go all in on a first date. Start with low stakes questions that build trust. Like: What are three words that would define your week? Who makes you laugh the loudest? Keep it thoughtful but easy. Psychologist Tanya Percy Vasunia also urges people, ​“to take the time to understand what ​‘meaningful connection’ means to you – vulnerability requires patience and courage.”

Pop culture has portrayed intimacy with a universal brushstroke where how much trauma you spill equals how close you want to be. But warmth isn’t ctrl C, ctrl V. ​“I realised that it’s easy for me to talk about trouble in my childhood or my past relationships,” says 22-year-old Kyle, a chef who prefers to keep their surname anonymous. ​“I find it harder to talk about my little achievements. If I text you about how I burnt the crème brûlée just right, then I’m in deep.”

Building an honest relationship is no joke. It requires introspection, but the payoff is just as special. In Hinge’s report, Brown explains that, ​“Early dating often locks people into invisible scripts, such as [in heterosexual relationships] who texts first, who plans the date and who shows more emotion. In a culture that tells young men to be a certain way and young women to be another… falling into these roles can quietly sabotage the connection.”

Hold that eye roll. You might assume that archaic gender norms, like a woman not making the first move, don’t extend to Gen Z. It’s the most gender-non-conforming generation in near history, comprising adults who came of age during the fourth-wave of feminism, right? Well, not really. Currently the internet is losing its mind because a girlfriend proposed instead of sitting coy and waiting for her prince charming. This uproar only reinforces the prejudiced rhetoric that the stoic man must act and fulfill while the ditzy woman feels and receives.

Hinge’s data also shows that 43 per cent of Gen Z women wait for the other person to initiate deeper conversations, in part because they assume men don’t want to have them. (Not true, 65 per cent of heterosexual men want to have deeper conversations on the first few dates.) Meanwhile, 48 per cent of Gen Z men are holding back from emotional intimacy because they don’t want to seem ​“too much”. The internet often plays into these assumptions. Charlotte recently discovered how the memes she mindlessly consumes can displace emotional responsibility.

“My boyfriend [of two months] and I were arguing about how I’ve become the baby in the dynamic, and the bare minimum versus princess treatment challenge came up,” the sales assistant explains. The trend saw women asking their partners whether certain acts of service – bringing food when you’re unwell, tying your shoelaces or buying flowers every day just because – are the bare minimum in a relationship or princess treatment. In some cases water is thrown in the boyfriend’s face as punishment for failing to recognise basic service.

Fixating on these videos, Charlotte internalised certain expectations and responsibilities. ​“I wanted him to walk me to the tube station every morning and to carry my luggage everywhere we travelled,” she says. ​“Now we’ve consciously stopped sending these toxic girl-boy memes, and it’s doing us good.”

This gamification of relationships is shockingly common. Earlier it was the ​“orange peel theory” – does he hand over an unpeeled fruit or peel it for you? Recently people are testing if their dates are good listeners by trying out the ​“bird theory”. For this, you claim to have seen a bird and see how interested the date is in this mundane detail. Ridiculous as they sound, people use these covert strategies to suss out potential partners, trusting them as if they were recommended by Cupid incarnate.

Of course, it’s much harder to be vulnerable when you look at dates as content or if you’re scared of becoming a victim to a viral trend, such as the recent ​“date till you hate” challenge, where women are encouraged to be with partners until the attraction turns to disdain. ​“When you’re so busy putting on a show, there’s no space for a connection to be formed. It also creates a loss of safety,” says Vasunia.

Mind you, games aren’t entirely bad for relationships. They just need to be used to further the connection instead of testing it. Tatum Van Dam, a 27-year-old social media manager, says, ​“I brought the card game We’re Not Really Strangers on my first date with my [straight male] partner of three years. It’s meant to facilitate deeper conversations, and it created space for us to feel comfortable chatting about things we may not have spoken about until later.”

Good news: 85 per cent of Gen Z are more likely to want a second date when they’re asked thoughtful questions. So, if prompts help, use them. ​“I like to combine a compliment with a question. Last week I broke a weird silence by noticing that my date has amber eyes, so I asked if she inherited them from someone in her family,” explains Malhotra. At a time when only 25 per cent of LGBTQIA+ daters feel that they’re asked enough questions on a first date, Malhotra’s hack is a good addition to any romance arsenal. ​“I was fearful of coming off as overly invested, but that didn’t get me anywhere. Now I just own it: I like you, I want something real, next?”

Often, singles are so scared of being labelled – love bombers, trauma dumpers, take your pick – that it stunts authenticity. Somewhere along the way these tags became prescriptive rules for dating. It’s time to disassociate from them. Gen Z is ready to drop the pretence of embarrassing boyfriends and move into earnestness. Now it’s about unlearning the language of cringe. You don’t need to prove to the world that you’re a green flag for a date to work. Trust your instincts. Let’s talk it out.

*Where indicated, a person’s name has been replaced with a pseudonym for confidentiality