The boss of Hinge has a blunt diagnosis for why her dating app needs to step in with artificial intelligence to get young singles talking: they have lost the confidence older generations had to make the first move.
Jackie Jantos told the BBC that Gen Z daters “absolutely want love” but were “struggling to have the confidence to put themselves out there” because they socialise less in person. Hinge’s AI feature – which creates prompts to start chatting with a match – is “not about writing words for you”, she said, but “helping you express who you are”.
“Hinge boss Jackie Jantos says Gen Z lacks confidence to date, so AI helps them start conversations.”
The defence comes as Hinge continues to grow its UK users despite warnings from some relationship experts about “dating app burnout” and a return to more organic face-to-face meetings. Founded in 2012 and owned by Match Group – which also owns Tinder and Match.com – Hinge has built its brand around the slogan “designed to be deleted”. Jantos dismissed accusations that this was “just a marketing line”, insisting it wants to help users find long-term relationships rather than stay on the platform indefinitely.
Data from Ipsos iris shows that some 1.5 million adults used Hinge in the year to May 2025, up from 1.4 million a year earlier. Over the same period, Tinder’s audience fell from 1.9 million to 1.5 million, leaving it only marginally ahead of Hinge as the most visited dating app. Bumble and Grindr follow behind.
Jantos, speaking on the BBC’s Big Boss interview podcast, said Gen Z – who account for more than half of Hinge’s monthly active users – were spending around 1,000 fewer hours a year in person with other people than the same age group two decades ago. That equates to more than two hours per day, she said, “spent not in the company of another human, but most likely going deep in some sort of experience engaged in your phone”.
“This prevents people from having the experience of being around others and that is quite a lonely experience,” she added.
The 47-year-old said almost half of Gen Z people in the UK now feel lonely “often or always”. She pointed to the Covid pandemic, which meant many young adults missed out on formative years of social interaction. “Those years when you’re sort of experimenting with how you show up in person with another person, how you flirt, how you think about intimacy, that was interrupted for many people,” she said.
Dr Carolina Bandinelli, an associate professor at the University of Warwick who researches dating, relationships and communication, agreed that the pandemic changed dating for Gen Z. “There was the sense that dating apps are [now] the only way to meet people,” she said.