BUENOS AIRES — What do we look for in a relationship? For Generation Z (born from to mid-1990s to 2010), “old-fashioned” attributes have returned.
Polls taken in several countries by dating apps Bumble and Tinder suggest 18-25 year olds want qualities such as friendliness, kindness, empathy and authenticity. Buenos Aires-based psychologist Mauricio Strugo told Clarín that youngsters using such dating apps “have changed the way they search for relations this way: they are looking for people, not bodies, which means giving greater importance to bonding attitudes like kindness. It’s important to share values when you want to be with someone.”
Friendliness and empathy
Most of those polled in Argentina (85%) cited friendliness as more important than good looks, followed by honesty (73%) and empathy or the ability to put yourselves in another’s place (70%). A little under 40% of respondents identified kindness with strangers as a good early sign in a potential new date.
Sturgo emphasizes positive details here such as verbal courtesy — saying thank you or “excuse me” — and said these cut across the sexes and indicated a broader attitude of “gratefulness and cordiality.”
“The past five years, 74% of youngsters had changed their idea of a great partner.”
Bumble has discovered that in the past five years, 74% of youngsters had changed their idea of a great partner, with girls now stressing they would no longer tolerate toxic conduct.
Substance over style
Tinder found in turn that “authenticity,” or plain honesty and respect, had become crucial. People weren’t willing to be fooled anymore, Strugo said, and “deceptive seduction is giving way to the responsibility of sincerity, saying what we like right from the start, and if we don’t want the same things, just move on.”
“Gen Z consider values such as loyalty, respect and an open mind priorities over appearances.”
Three quarters of respondents said they considered a potential partner more interesting if he or she worked on their mental wellbeing. Tinder concluded that Gen Z consider values such as loyalty, respect and an open mind priorities over appearances, with just over half of respondents citing the latter as their priority.
The application found that Gen Z were a third less likely to engage in “ghosting” — just disappearing for no good reason — in comparison with people in their thirties or older. Variations of this irksome habit of the dating world are “orbiting,” where personal communications end but the ex-date will “orbit” you online, with social media likes or comments, or “zombieing” where a “ghost” returns from the past after failing to find another date.
