Why my Gen Z mates don’t have boyfriends

A third of under-30s haven’t had a partner. Tyler Bennett knows how that happens

Sunday September 06 2026, 8.00pm BST,

A recent YouGov survey revealed that 33 per cent of 18 to 29-year-olds have never been in a relationship, compared with 9 per cent of the wider population. To older generations, this might read like a tragedy of modern loneliness. To anyone under 30, it barely raises an eyebrow.

My mum pointed out that when she was in her late twenties, like I am, her peers had houses, corner offices, children and second mortgages under way. Half my friends don’t have a partner, let alone the rest of it, and fewer still can be bothered to look.

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As a 27-year-old lawyer friend with excellent cheekbones and a history of being happily boyfriend-free said: “You’re asking for a date to compete with Sainsbury’s Basics, the quality of my sheets, the depth of conversations I could have with my friends and the new face mask I bought? He is losing to the face mask every time.”

Why have a third of under-30s never been in a relationship?

The women in my life are the epitome of this. We have our own communities, careers and can live alone (or at least with six strangers in a wildly overpriced Victorian terrace found through the Facebook group Gals Who Rent).

I have friends who are creatives, doctors and executives. They can manage clients, patients and companies, plus social calendars I struggle to get onto as their friend. Singledom is hardly the great practical emergency it once was. We’ve spent years building lives where a partner is an addition, not a necessity, and have fewer reasons to settle for someone who is just fine. We’re more afraid of a man disrupting that than of some barren, lonely future without one.

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In theory dating apps should make finding someone easier — yet having someone theoretically better one swipe away has made us spectacularly intolerant consumers. Hence there’s the tyranny of “ick” culture.

I’m Gen Z. I know why some of my peers are unemployable

Last year I went on a date with a gorgeous man who ticked all my boxes: funny, clever, close with his family, capable of asking a follow-up question and — unusually for a dating app — exactly as advertised. After a fantastic date I watched him select the wrong currency at an ATM and felt all interest evaporate on the spot. By the next Tube station I had remembered an improbably early start the next morning and fled. Not my finest moment, but unfortunately a terminal one.

When I first moved to London in my early twenties I was living in a Brixton flatshare and I dated mostly for the tourism: I was new to the city, most of my friends hadn’t moved there yet and I liked wine bars. But among the four Gen Zers on our sofa, I was the anomaly. We swiped for sport — actually going on the dates was another matter. My Australian flatmate would regularly say: “He seems nice but does he seem put-on-my-jeans nice?”

In terms of actual relationships, though, the numbers are much smaller. At 28 I’ve had two fairly unserious boyfriends and two serious ones — including my first, with whom I got back together at the end of last year. I am now extremely, perhaps conventionally, serious about him.

I’ve discovered I may be something of a traditionalist. At lunch last week I said: “I just want to be married!” My friend, wonderfully unmoved, deadpanned: “Why?”

But it’s not that Gen Z have stopped wanting intimacy; we’ve just stopped believing that a relationship is automatically better than being without one.

I think some of it is down to better sex education. My generation have grown up amid a wave of women talking more openly about pleasure, from podcasts and social media to conversations with friends. It means we know we’re supposed to have an orgasm when we have sex — and that the odds don’t look especially good with a one-night stand.

Is it inappropriate to use LinkedIn as a dating app? I do

My oldest friend, newly single, told me she’d just been asked out by a guy at her run club. He was attractive, she fancied him, but she still wasn’t sure she could be bothered to go. Frankly, the flirtation had done the useful bit: she felt desirable and reassured of her options. Turning it into an actual date, with the possibility of disappointing sex at the end, was more effort than excitement.

It’s not just women. Young men seem to be wary of relationships too. Some of my male friends genuinely wonder what they are supposed to bring to the table now. One, who is 25, described giving up on dating completely: “I’m supposed to be successful but not work-obsessed, confident but vulnerable, and masculine but not too masculine. I spend most dates trying not to accidentally become a red flag.”

Staying single can start to look like the path of least resistance, when everything is so expensive and many of my educated, employed friends still live in their childhood bedrooms. I can confirm this is not a recipe for romance. I spent my early single years living with my parents, where the walk of shame had a strict 5am deadline: Dad was taking the dog out.

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