How dating doomscrolling is impacting our brains (and our love lives)
“I’m so over waiting, like when is it gonna be my turn? What did I do wrong? What is wrong with me?”, says content creator Jules Montgomery, 28, as she cries to the camera. “I don’t want to sit around swiping on dating apps and going on these first dates where you just sit down and you’re like, let’s see if we like each other. It just feels so forced. I don’t want to be alone forever. When is it gonna be my turn to fall in love?”
The video, posted earlier this year, has racked up 1.4 million views, as well as thousands of comments from other single women about how they can relate. “I have this breakdown literally everyday. I’m 27 and terrified,” one wrote. “Just want someone to watch TV with, but I am completely terrified these days. Feels like grief,” wrote another.
If these comments sound familiar, it’s not just because they’re eerily similar to the Pride and Prejudice film quote that endlessly circulates social media (you know the one: ‘I’m 27 years old. I’ve no money and no prospects. I’m already a burden to my parents. And I’m frightened’ – mood!), but because videos like Montgomery’s and the emphatic response to them — expressing despair about modern dating — are thriving all over social media.
Yep, we’ve reached peak dating pessimism — and it’s not just contained to the digital realm. Complaints about the scourge of today’s dating scene are rife across both our FYPs and IRL conversations. In the past, ruminating over romantic aloneness would either be a solo affair or one you shared over cocktails with friends à la Sex and the City. Now, though, you can scroll through 20 to 30 videos in just 10 minutes, and hear multiple people echoing opinions about why none of us will ever find love.
Everyone is either rolling their eyes at repetitive conversation openers (and then sharing screenshots of them), complaining about bad dates, or preaching the benefits of going ‘boy sober’ and deleting dating apps for good. Content creators are sharing videos where they ask when it’s their turn to ‘find their person’, explain how they feel like they’re part of a romantic revolution they didn’t sign up for, or talk about how the bar ‘is in hell’ and how everyone only wants casual situationships these days.
Social media users repeatedly regurgitate a statistic claiming that one in four adults will stay single for life, despite the study itself — allegedly by the Pew Research Centre — being nowhere to be found online. For those who are dating, you better be clued up on attachment styles, rubber band theory, and star charts, otherwise your dating life is destined to fail. Oh and BTW, dating apps are the worst and you’ll never find a relationship on them — but also no one meets in person anymore, so I guess you may as well just give up altogether?
In fairness, many of these videos are well-intentioned; they provide a space for people — especially women who date men — to share their negative dating experiences and find an online community of people they can relate to. However, what might start as a way of seeking advice or community can quickly turn into a bottomless pit of chronically online romantic disillusion. Case in point: the time I used to spend swiping on Hinge is now spent scrolling through my TikTok FYP and listening to hundreds of people talking about how bad contemporary dating is, with the bleak outlook that nothing is ever going to change.
And, although studies show that frequent usage of dating apps is associated with higher levels of loneliness and symptoms of depression, deleting the apps only to transfer that attention to dating doomscrolling isn’t great for you, either. In fact, doomscrolling negative news stories has been associated with an increase in depression and anxiety, as well as feelings of fear, stress, and sadness. Scrolling through video after video about other people’s negative dating experiences can have a similar effect, compounding pre-existing beliefs about how awful dating is right now. So, why do we do it?
Relationship therapist Jessica Good explains that these videos are so easy to binge because they help us feel understood. Speaking to friends in happy relationships doesn’t validate our dating experiences the same way that engaging with online content about the current dating landscape does. But, explains Good, this approach can lead to this “not-so-great situation where you’re just going down that rabbit hole and only seeing one perspective on a situation. We want to be understood, seen, and heard, so whenever we go online and there’s a little bit of bias, we’re going to engage in content that confirms our story and our narrative”.
Constantly engaging with negative dating discourse can lead to feelings of hopelessness, but the dopamine that comes from scrolling through relatable content can make it hard to quit. “The disillusionment and sense of hopelessness is one of the key indicators of depression,” explains Good. “We might feel depressed about a specific topic, like never finding a partner, having nobody, and giving up on dating — but we’re creatures of habit, and so we do things that feel more comfortable, [even if they exacerbate this bad feeling]. It’s hard to do the hard thing, which would be to say, ‘Actually, I’m not going to consume that kind of content anymore’.”
Amber, 30, found that her confidence levels declined when she started dating and, as a result, she was spending more time doomscrolling through negative content about dating and relationships. “I was doomscrolling for hours, which led to an increase in the algorithm showing me negative dating videos,” she says. “It makes me feel hopeless about dating. It’s really brought out a very unreasonably insecure side of me that’s bubbled to the surface in my present dating life.”
It’s like the chicken and the egg. Are we pessimistic about dating because dating sucks right now? Or does dating suck because we’re so pessimistic about it?
“The overriding message at the moment is that dating is hell,” says Ella, 28, who went back to dating recently after breaking up with her ex of four years, only to find the landscape unrecognisable. “The dating world feels very tense. It makes me put my guard up more. It is on my mind like, ‘OK, how are you gonna meet someone if no one talks to anyone anymore?’ I don’t want to die alone, you know. I want love just like everyone else wants love.”
Jess, 21, agrees that the content she sees online about dating is overwhelmingly negative. “Whenever I see positive content, like people talking about how they met their partner on a dating app, everyone in the comments is shocked and says it’s so rare,” she tells Cosmopolitan UK. “It makes me feel like dating isn’t attainable and finding a partner is hard. It’s definitely made me feel worried and anxious.”
Fleeksie, 29, is a content creator who documents her experience of quitting dating and going ‘boy sober’. But, she says, most of the dating content she sees online is unhelpful and repetitive. “It’s like a radio,” she explains. “You’re flipping channels, and every channel is playing the same song and they’re all singing the same tune and it doesn’t deviate. It doesn’t matter if what they’re saying isn’t original or if it’s unhelpful — people still want to hear it.”
Of course, dating content isn’t all bad. Online conversations about decentring men helped embolden Fleeksie to approach her singleness from a place of positivity, rather than taking a defeatist attitude and feeling like she was giving up. And she’s not alone in this; there’s a flourishing movement online that celebrates long-term singleness and prioritises the decentring of romantic relationships in order to focus on self-love and the platonic love in your life. In fact, content about the benefits of quitting dating is gaining almost as much traction as the pessimistic dating horror stories. But, while a movement embracing the joys of being single is a wonderful thing, for every video outlining the benefits of decentring romantic love, there are many more admitting that, at times, it can still feel lonely and disheartening.
For Amber, taking a break from TikTok and Instagram helped her feel more hopeful and less anxious about dating. Now if she’s looking for advice, she posts on the r/datingadvice subreddit, which, she says, feels more intentional than TikTok. “I’m able to concentrate on myself more and regulate my emotional swings with at least a little more rationality,” she explains. “Talking everything out with friends helped a lot too.”
Talking to friends can help give us a more balanced view of finding love. Online, everyone is very quick to dismiss dating apps, but we all likely know a few couples who have met that way, proving that modern dating isn’t — as the internet might have you believe — entirely doomed.
So, if you feel like you’re getting bogged down with all the negative online dating discourse, Good recommends “taking a step back, setting a timer, or finding an activity to do”. She adds that engaging with relatable dating content in moderation isn’t innately unhealthy, but it’s important to know when to log off. “Maybe you had a crappy date and you look at a TikTok to feel better. You’re probably feeling [a need for] that in the moment, but how can you step away from that content so it doesn’t become that everything is hopeless and doomed?”
Negative dating content thrives because there is some truth to it. For many people, dating right now isn’t great. Perhaps it has always been bad. Or maybe constantly talking about how bad it is makes it worse. Either way, dating doomscrolling isn’t going to make us feel better. We often use social media to seek out advice or find a space to vent, but where possible, it’s better to log off, touch grass, and speak to our friends and IRL community. Dating might be hell sometimes, but we’re not doomed to be alone forever just because our phones say so. Falling in love is special and it can feel rare, but it’s not the statistical near impossibility that it is portrayed as online.
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