“I think these technologies are becoming more popular, more widespread, and more advanced, but they’re still not at the place where they’re reversing four million years of evolution in terms of our desire to form deeper bonds,” Dr. Justin Garcia, executive director of the Kinsey Institute, said in an interview with Mashable.
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Garcia is the author of the recently released book pet animalsAll about the science behind sex and love. He sat down with Mashable to discuss AI, dating apps, and Gen Z daters, just in time for Valentine’s Day.
AI relationships as ‘training wheels’
Single people are using AI Different ways to date. Some use it to customize their photos and bios, while others skip human relationships altogether and date an AI. In a survey last year, AI collaboration company Zoey found that eight out of 10 Gen Zers would “Marrying” an AI..
Garcia finds AI somewhat helpful if you think of AI as “training wheels” – if you want a little advice or want to build confidence and practice.
“The thing about training wheels is at best, you take them off at some point,” he said.
There are elements of the relationship that are not replicated in conversations with LLMs (as of this publication, anyway – who knows what progress could be made). What Garcia identified is the reciprocal nature of relationships. “Part of what we want in a relationship is, ‘I want to do nice things for you. I want you to do nice things for me,'” he said.
The psychology of a couple’s relationship involves a dyadic process of whether you are growing together and making each other’s lives better. For example, getting up early when you don’t feel like it and making breakfast for yourself and your partner.
The three elements of a relationship are I, you and we, Garcia explained. “I’m not sure right now that people interacting with these AIs think there’s a ‘we’ out there.”
AI relationships seem more transactional. “If I have a relationship with an AI, yes, it will tell me every day that I’m smart and I’m beautiful…there’s something cool about that,” he said, “but do I really think I’m making Its Life better?” Part of a happy, satisfying relationship is making your partner’s life better.
Advantages and disadvantages of dating apps
Garcia has worked with Match as a scientific advisor since 2010, but he’s not afraid to criticize the apps.
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“The challenge with apps is that they are different from how we have engaged in courtship for millions of years,” he said. When we meet a potential partner, we want to hear their voice, see their body language, smell them, feel them, get to know their social networks — you can’t get that from an app (okay, maybe their voice if you’re using Hinge’s voice note feature).
That doesn’t mean the apps haven’t been a boon for different groups of people, like people who are neurodivergent or daters who want something specific, whether it’s a certain religion or fetish. You can find someone through any app. “It’s pretty incredible to me, that we have that capability,” he said.
But its positives don’t erase the negatives of dating apps, like distraction, distraction, and over-customization. Ghosting and bad user behavior are other problems.
And dating app burnout There is no existence in a void. people have reported burnout in other areas of life, not just dating, and Garcia finds it in some ways conducive to our current political, financial and environmental climate.
But despite these challenges, courtship has always been a competition, Garcia said, and it wasn’t so much fun 100 or 200 years ago. So the real question for dating apps is how do we use them better?
“We can think about being more intentional. We can think about filling out our own profile, thinking about connecting to a profile,” he said. And remember that dating is also a binary process, meant to be between two people, so the more deliberate option is not to swipe between 1,000 people and go on a second date, even if there are other options on your phone.
“Similar to AI, [apps are] Tools we can use. When we let them run the show, we get ourselves into trouble,” Garcia said.
Gen Z daters need to stop self-optimizing
There are other challenges that have nothing to do with dating apps, but may be the fault of the technology. newly published Research Match Group and the Kinsey Institute suggest that young adults want love, but believe they are not ready for it. Only 55 percent of 18-29 year olds feel ready to pursue a romantic relationship, while 80 percent believe they will find true love. (This is according to a survey of 2,500 American singles conducted by The Harris Poll between September and October 2025.)
“We are seeing a generation of people who are very focused on self-actualization.”
“We’re seeing a generation of people who are very focused on self-actualization, such as the belief that you have to work on yourself before you can enter a relationship,” Garcia told Mashable.
“You think our ancestors ‘worked on themselves’?” He joked. We, especially young adults, are focused on the idea that we have to “work on ourselves” in isolation, then get ready to potentially date. And some self-improvement can happen on your own, but Garcia said, “Working on yourself happens in the context of a relationship.”
“That relationship is the container for making mistakes and finding yourself and having a reliable co-pilot to pick you up and support each other,” he said.
Young people can put too much emphasis on “I need to be perfect, and you need to be perfect, and we need to figure out what we want in a corner,” she said. “I don’t think that’s helpful.”
Amelia Miller, a researcher in Match Group’s Human Connections Lab, believes technology plays a role in these feelings among young adults.
“Social media and AI companions are teaching Gen Z that the messiness of human relationships should be controlled, not embraced, but that vulnerability and friction are essential elements of intimacy,” Miller said in the press release for the data. “The self-actualization that Gen Z is seeking alone is actually unlocked through relationships with others.”
So maybe in 2026, we don’t need more technology to adapt to us; We don’t need to optimize at all. Maybe to find love we need to be a little more human.
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