The Death of the Dating App

In mid-2025, Bumble’s founder Whitney Wolfe Herd returned to the company she had left fourteen months earlier and offered a blunt assessment of the industry she helped build. Today’s dating apps, she told Fortune, “are rooted in rejection and judgment [and] these are not healthy dynamics.” The stock market agrees. Bumble’s share price has collapsed more than ninety percent from its 2021 peak, erasing most of its US$13 billion valuation. As of 25 July 2025, the share price was US$8.62 with a market cap near US$880 million, but it has since declined over fifty percent to US$4.21, with the market cap now at around US$549–640 million. Match Group, owner of Tinder and Hinge, has shed tens of billions in market capitalisation and cut thirteen percent of its workforce. A 2024 Ofcom report found that Tinder lost 600,000 UK users in a single year; Hinge and Bumble also recorded significant declines. According to a Forbes Health survey, 79 percent of Gen Z users reported dating app fatigue. A 2025 Hims study found that 77 percent of Gen Z adults in relationships met their partner in person, not through an app. Evolutionary psychology offers a possible explanation of what has gone wrong.