What If Smartphones Aren’t Killing Romance — but Saving It?

My husband and I met in the same academic building where my parents first met decades earlier as students.

When we recently returned to that spot around our 10th wedding anniversary, we joked with our children that if they attended the same college, perhaps they’d meet their future spouses in that very building, too. Part of me hopes they do. It would make for a cute family story across generations.

But statistically, I know they’re far more likely to one day find love with the help of an online matchmaker. That doesn’t make me sad. I think of the couples I know who met online. They were brought together by an algorithm, yet their marriages are no less happy, and their children are no less loved because of it.

Some, however, lament this new mode of family formation. Others contend, more despairingly, that humanity is about to “scroll its way out of existence,” believing that smartphones are a drag on fertility. Are these devices replacing in-person interaction, romantic relationships and children?

Most Couples Meet Online
The available research suggests smartphones have become the most common way couples meet, which makes them one of the most powerful matchmaking technologies ever built.

According to research from Stanford University, in 2021 more than 50% of new U.S. couples met online, a category that includes meeting through digital forums, social media and dating apps.

That may actually understate the role of technology as an effective matchmaker. The Stanford data also appear to show a post-2010 rise in couples first meeting in “bars and restaurants,” but according to the researchers, that “is due entirely to couples who met online and subsequently had a first in-person meeting at a bar or restaurant.”

A 2024 survey of nearly 8,000 newly engaged couples similarly found dating apps were the single most common way they met, ahead of every offline route. That survey, from The Knot, an online wedding services platform, found couples first connected through a variety of different dating apps including Hinge, Tinder, Bumble, OkCupid, Match, Plenty of Fish and eHarmony.

Technology has long been blamed for inadvertently hindering family formation. Recent research from Northwestern University suggests the typewriter may have lowered birth rates by bringing more women into the workforce. Yet the same research also suggests the typewriter led to many “office romance” marriages — and, presumably, many children.

Today, technology continues to bring couples together. Smartphones are increasingly accused of fueling the global decline in fertility, but the evidence that smartphones reduce fertility is weaker than many think. For example, some economists point out that most of Italy’s fertility decline preceded smartphone adoption.

Studies on average marital satisfaction between couples who met online and offline show mixed results, but some research suggests slightly higher marital satisfaction among the former as well as slightly less separation and divorce. Digital introductions can lead to lasting partnerships, and divorce rates are at their lowest point in half a century. That trend is driven by highly committed married millennials, many of whom met their spouse online.

Although dating apps and other online mechanisms are the leading way couples first connect, there is still significant room for improvement. Rates of couple formation (and, consequently, fertility) declined across many countries, even though most single young adults say they are aspiring toward marriage.

Some would blame the phones. Yet, some data shows a decline in teen dating that predates smartphones, starting in the early 1990s. And research suggests the widespread adoption of online dating between 2008 and 2021 had remarkably little effect on individuals’ romantic preferences or selectivity — that is, their pickiness — to the researchers’ surprise. Nonetheless, many singles still struggle to meet the right person.

Traditional matchmakers are expensive, but AI holds the promise of dramatically lowering the cost and democratizing access to high-quality, personalized matchmaking as well as enhancing matchmaking through higher success rates.

The race is already on to harness AI to improve digital courtship. For example, the company Keeper AI bills itself as “AI-assisted matchmaking for serious, long-term relationships” and claims that with their app, “1 in 10 first dates lead to marriage.” Other new AI-powered dating platforms include Known and Overtone.

Older dating apps also aim to improve their effectiveness with AI. Earlier this year, Bumble introduced an AI-powered profile guidance feature providing users with feedback on their bios, and plans to entirely replace swiping with AI-based matchmaking later this year in select markets. Meta similarly says its AI assistant for Facebook Dating helps users optimize their profiles and highlight their best qualities to appeal to potential matches.

Smartphones and dating apps are frequently criticized for undermining traditional courtship and contributing to declining fertility. Yet if they were to suddenly disappear, couple formation would likely suffer, given that most couples now first meet online. Smartphones, perhaps paradoxically, act as vital family-formation infrastructure in the modern world.