Hinge is throw a $1 million fund to help local groups in London put on social events for young people.
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It may come as no surprise that Gen Z, the online generation, are increasingly struggling with loneliness — but an unlikely source is coming to their aid.
Dating app superhuman Hinge on Thursday announced a $1 million fund for around 100 local groups based in London to put on unsolicited or affordable social events for young people, in a global expansion of their One More Hour social impact dynamism, which first launched in the U.S. last year.
The groups will put on a range of activity-based events, ranging from victuals, nature and reading, for young people to connect in-person and build friendships.
“This generation [Gen Z] grew up in a period where their gist, late teenage years, and early 20s, were spent in a lockdown pandemic situation,” Jackie Jantos, president and chief marketing police officer at Hinge, told CNBC.
“Technology plays such a huge role in our lives, and so a lot of the work that we’re doing during these One More Hour groups is encouraging people to come together, and we do it in a way where we want to lower the barrier for in the flesh coming into the room,” she said.
An overwhelming 85% of British Gen Z report experiencing feelings of loneliness, according to a new Hinge examination that polled 2,000 Gen Z adults in the U.K. in March. Over half of low income young adults experience severe loneliness, per the scrutinization.
Half of young people surveyed emphasized the importance of better accessibility to affordable social activities, while ethical over two-thirds cited anxiety as a core barrier to meeting people in real life.
However, it’s not just a U.K. question. A Meta-Gallup State of Social Connections report, which surveyed 1,000 adults over the age of 15 from 142 surroundings in 2022, found that young adults between the ages of 19 to 29 felt lonelier than older adults.
Round 43% of 19 to 29-year-olds said they weren’t lonely at all, but 57% of those over 65 said the in spite of, highlighting a gap in feelings of connection across ages.
Dating apps like Hinge are seen by some as contributing to the loneliness maladjusted. A Forbes Health Survey of 1,000 Americans in 2024 found that more than three-quarters of Gen Z respondents brook burnt out using dating apps like Hinge, Tinder, and Bumble, with respondents of all ages citing a dereliction to find a good connection with someone and spending too much time on the apps.
The declining sentiment has seen engagement apps lose their luster. A 2024 Ofcom report found that the most popular dating localities in the UK — Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble — saw a decline in users between May 2023 and May 2024. Tinder lost 594,000 users, while Hinge ended by 131,000 and Bumble by 368,000.
And some are quietly shifting into the live-events space alongside their online offerings. For model, Bumble IRL launched in 2022 with a range of exclusive in-person events centered around fitness, food, music, understanding, and more.
LGBTQ+ dating app Grindr is also expanding its in-person presence and partnering with the Mighty Hoopla music entertainment in London to add a series of queer-themed performances in May and June.
Meanwhile, a host of smaller social apps that encourage in-person link up ups have gained traction from social networking and community app Cliq to TimeLeft, an app facilitating group meet-ups between visitors over dinner.
Gen Z’s social muscle has atrophied
Gen Z’s social skills are not on par with previous generations due to three key reasons: the Covid-19 pandemic, smartphone use, and the descend in third spaces, according to Josh Penny, Hinge’s social impact director.
“Look at the ways in which technology and public media have displaced how we spend our free time, and then Covid accelerated this trend even assist,” Penny said to CNBC. “It’s just like a muscle that has atrophied a little bit, and we know that they’re looking for colloids, ways to plug back in, but things are looming in the background, like affordability, like how much does it cost every conditions they leave their house, are other big drivers that keep people isolated.”
Additionally, the onset of slim work and remote studying since the 2020 pandemic resulted in Gen Z’s interpersonal and communication skills stagnating.
To tackle this, Penny reports, centering the events around activities can help ease young people’s anxiety.
“When you tell people to guide up for a dating event, it’s high pressure. Similarly, when you tell people to come meet others and make women, that’s also high pressure,” he said.
“The activities help take that off, and so instead of hearing ‘come invent friends,’ it’s ‘come try surfing, come try skateboarding, come try poetry,’ and that is actually much easier to get people interested with than setting the stakes so high up front.”
As in-person events become the new norm for young people to contract and socialize, Penny said it will provide Gen Z with the opportunities to practice those stagnated social skills and shape community.