Editor’s note, October 29, 2026, 10:15 am ET: This article was originally published in 2022 and has been updated for Halloween 2026.

With an October 30 birthday, it’s only natural that Kimberly Murphy takes Halloween extremely seriously. A natural redhead, Murphy has dressed up as iconic crimson-haired characters like the Wendy’s mascot and Chuckie from Rugrats, but once she started dating her now-fiancé, Brian, nearly a decade ago, Murphy’s costumes leveled up. A selection of Murphy and Brian’s greatest Halloween hits: Dexter and Dee Dee from Dexter’s Laboratory, Ms. Frizzle and the eponymous bus from The Magic School Bus, Jack and Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas, Tormund and Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones, and Shaun White and a snowboard. 

“We put my snowboard on his back so I could actually ‘ride’ him,” Murphy, who, regardless of the character’s gender, always dresses as the redhead, says. “It gave a funny, experiential element to the costume.”

This October, the couple, both in their early 30s, is getting married and will be depicting Chucky and Bride of Chucky for Halloween. (You can guess who’ll be donning the white dress.)

In childhood, Halloween is one of the few days of the year when you can wear your most imaginative garb to school and to strangers’ doors. As you get older, that sense of youthful creativity might wane, and figuring out what to wear to a costume party becomes another minor conundrum. Whether you dabble in dress-up or are a cosplay aficionado, conceiving of creative, yet approachable, Halloween attire doesn’t need to be a bewildering or expensive experience. Experts in the art of costuming offer their advice for ideating and executing your best guise so you can take home top honors in this year’s costume contest.

Narrow your focus

When every character, celebrity, historical figure, animal, pun, and meme is potential costume fodder, homing in on one idea can feel overwhelming. Limitations and parameters are your best friend. Use your own appearance — is there a person or fictional character who has a similar style as you? Vaguely comparable features? — and the media that interested you this year as jumping-off points. Everything from YA novels and nostalgic ‘90s TV shows to extremely local jokes and gags (public transit, sports mascots) to niche memes (hello, Chris Pine astral projecting) are prime inspo. 

Is there an alter ego you’re interested in exploring? Cosplayer and photographer Hope Elmekies often dresses up as characters she feels a personal connection to, like Morticia Addams. “I very much felt like I related to [her] because she’s not fitting in,” she says. “I felt that kinship to that character.”

For all of her costumes, Murphy has let her red hair and the height difference between her and her fiancé (she’s 5 feet tall, he’s 6-foot-2) guide her choices. She thinks back to significant pop culture or historical moments that fall under these categories. For example, Murphy flagged Queen’s Gambit as a potential ensemble, due to its buzzworthiness and the fact that the protagonist had red hair. “I take this formulaic approach to Halloween where if it’s unusually small or redheaded,” she says, “that fits my formula of a potential Halloween candidate.”

For group or family costumes, it can be helpful to focus on one shared interest, accessory, or hobby. If you all met in an adult dodgeball league, maybe you want to dress up as dodgeball players. Maybe your group is composed of three couples and you want to do a Grease-inspired collab.

Then, figure out what effect you’d like your costume to have. Is your goal to make everyone laugh? Be the sexy one? Go all-in on minute details? Incorporate a few friends for a group costume? This can help you zero in on an idea.

The location of your Halloween bash can help further narrow down your options, says custom costume maker Correen Borst-Straub of Correen’s Creative Designs. Think about where you’ll wear the getup to determine what’s appropriate. If you’re going to a party in a small apartment, you probably won’t want to wear a huge Marie Antoinette dress, or you might want to think twice about wearing vampire fangs to a costumed fundraiser with a sit-down dinner.

Buck convention, respectfully

Using popular culture as inspiration may yield a few potential ideas, but if you really want a memorable guise, approach these concepts in an unconventional manner. Many people tend to dress up as the main characters from popular shows, but supporting roles or genre tropes can also be crowd-pleasing attire. For her all-time favorite Halloween costume, Dani Cabot, the manager of New York City vintage boutique Screaming Mimis, dressed up as a virgin sacrifice. “I got bedsheets and a classic cheesy ’70s Roman goddess dress and I got a huge wig, and then a choker that made it look like my throat was slashed,” she says.

Even if you don’t share every physical trait with a character, use your differences to your advantage. Murphy and her fiancé have often dressed up as characters that have historically been depicted as opposite to the couple’s own gender presentation. “Gender is always very subjective,” says Philadelphia-based drag queen VinChelle. “Everyone can express themselves how they want to.” VinChelle frequently performs in looks inspired by Beyoncé and uses the star’s photoshoots as a reference. She’ll then scour fabric stores in Philadelphia or New York City for the garment and works closely with seamstresses to construct the outfit. “Beyoncé’s a glorified drag queen,” she says.  

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To be clear: This is not an excuse to appropriate other cultures, use makeup to darken your skin, or wear racist costumes. If you’re unsure if a costume is appropriate, run your idea by a few friends first, says Kate Farrier, the wardrobe manager for RWS Entertainment Group, an entertainment and event production company that has produced haunted experiences for the likes of Six Flags Great America, Sea World, and Legoland.

Reference your personal style

Think about ways you can infuse your personality into popular ideas. Say you want to be a witch or a vampire. What can you do to make the costume feel like you? If your one wardrobe staple is a leather jacket, make your witch persona wear a leather jacket. “If you’re always on your phone, maybe you’re a celebrity vampire, social media vampire,” Farrier says. “Try and make it about something that you always have by bringing your personal items into it because that will make it special for you.”

One year, a shopper at Screaming Mimis spiced up their vampire attire by adding ’70s disco accessories. “They did this insane disco Studio 54 vampire look,” Cabot says. You can also take a character who isn’t particularly known for their fashion, like Pac-Man, and make an interesting garment inspired by their aesthetic. 

Another way to differentiate is to make subtle changes to tried-and-true depictions. Borst-Straub has a 25 percent rule; she infuses her creativity into well-known designs so the resulting look is 75 percent true to pop culture and 25 percent her own.

Elmekies gets inspiration by searching her costume idea plus “cosplay” on Pinterest to see how others have approached the concept. Don’t worry about being so niche that everyone has to ask you what you are, Elmekies says. “So, what are you?” is a great icebreaker. “Sometimes when I go out as Belle from Beauty and the Beast, people don’t know who I am necessarily because it’s not a Disney knockoff; it’s more built that you can wear every day,” Elmekies says. 

Use what you’ve got (or shop secondhand)

Halloween outfits shouldn’t cost a ton of money. Think about the colors, shapes, and silhouettes needed for a costume to help you identify the look’s building blocks. For a gargoyle look, for example, you’ll need a lot of gray apparel and makeup. “Think about the shapes of things instead of the actual items,” says Ryan Walton, the producer of Halloween experiences for RWS Entertainment Group. “[Say] I need a round hoop-like thing. What can I do that’s round and hoop-like that’s not going to cost me a lot of money and then I can refabricate?”

Scour your closet (or your friends’ closets) for pieces you’ll need. If you’re dressing up as a flapper, dig out a slip dress if you have one. Then, let your accessories and props do all the talking. “So things like jewelry, gloves, stockings, headpieces, masks can really transform a basic into something that’s excellent,” Cabot says. 

For any pieces you don’t already own, visit a local vintage or thrift store or indie costume shop to get materials. Workers at these stores can offer expert costuming advice, and by shopping in person, you can be sure you’re getting exactly what you want — no online ordering surprises, Cabot says. Shopping secondhand is also far more sustainable than purchasing a polyester outfit from a big-box store. Chances are you can even incorporate aspects of your ensemble into your regular wardrobe, too.  

Rock your costume

Ultimately, you’re going to have the best time in an outfit you feel comfortable and confident wearing. Think about how the fabrics and props feel; it’s not worth being constricted by shoes that are impossible to walk in. “You will light up the most when you are wearing something that you love,” VinChelle says. “When I am in my favorite costume, I’m a whole other person.”

Even if you feel like you don’t have the “right” body type for a certain character or look, “you can look at it as this is my character and my character’s just curvy,” Elmekies says. “Realize your character is incredible.”

In 1995, gender studies researcher Judy Chu found herself chauffeuring around her 13-year-old brother and his friend. The boys’ curiosity got the better of them, and they asked what she was learning: adolescent girls’ development, she told them. 

One of the boys looked at her and said, “‘You should study boys. You can start with me,’” Chu recalled. So she did. That fall, she spoke to 13-year-old boys from home for her clinical interviewing class.

In the years since, Chu has researched boys between the ages 12 and 18 — their wishes, their desires, what they wanted from their friendships and romantic relationships — and discovered some felt largely unknown. There was a gap between what the world expected of them — the stoic, strong, independent stereotypes that have persisted for centuries — and how they saw themselves, but had internalized so many messages for so long that they felt like they had no choice but to accept this version of masculinity. Chu theorized that these beliefs must have taken root during their childhood, and she later published a book on the subject.

When toddlers enter school, she discovered, they begin learning the rules of boyhood. “Regardless of what their parents had encouraged or enabled at home, they were learning that at school, if you wanted to be seen as and treated as one of the boys and you wanted to be with the boys, you wanted to play with the boys, be friends with the boys, there were rules you had to follow,” Chu said. “It was kind of like a microcosm of our society, which is if you want people to see you as and treat you as a quote unquote real boy or real man, you need to prove yourself.”

Since Chu’s work on the subject, American culture has changed to address gender inequities — the ones that negatively affect girls. As a part of this movement, girls were empowered to be more autonomous and pursue careers and financial independence to build a life beyond marriage and childrearing. (Though it should be said, women still trail men in earnings, outpace them in household responsibilities, and have higher rates of anxiety, depression, and PTSD.) 

But boys are still stuck in place. 

Across the country, lawmakers have promoted policies and legislation aimed at helping men reach their potential. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a 2025 executive order outlining education, career, and mental health initiatives targeting men. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore created the state’s Young Men and Boys Initiative, focusing on men’s health, employment, and community connections. But these programs are reactive, attempting to disrupt decades of socialization. At the same time, the rise of the manosphere and misogynist online spaces and increasingly right-leaning voting trends among men signal a cohort of young men at a turning point.

Recent studies have found that boys are less likely to graduate high school on time compared to girls — that gap is even bigger for Black and Hispanic boys — and fewer young men obtain bachelor’s degrees compared to their female peers. And as fewer men graduate from college, fewer participate in the labor force, too. The suicide rate among men is nearly four times higher than that of women. While men and women report similar rates of loneliness and number of friends, men are less likely to turn to their social networks for support. Out of the over 750,000 jobs created since Donald Trump took office in 2025, men have gained none of them. 

So what will it take to help men get unstuck? If we are truly committed to ending the male loneliness crisis, to tackling suicide and gun violence — society has the power to change things for the next generation, experts said. Rather than aiming to reach men after the constraining masculine worldviews have already taken root, we can prevent them from warping boys’ sense of self in the first place: To help men, we must change how boys are raised. 

Reject the myth of the “real boy” 

In 2023, psychologist Michael Reichert conducted a nationally representative survey of more than 2,000 American men, asking them questions about their lives, relationships, internet habits, and sources of social support. One finding was particularly staggering: two-thirds of young men between the ages of 18 and 23 felt like no one really knew them well. (In a follow-up report two years later, in which women were also surveyed, equal percentages of men and women — about 50 percent — said they were not truly known.)

The conclusion Reichert came to, he told Vox, was “boyhood is failing at the most important task.” American society is producing young adults who feel like they’re on their own, “a tragic outcome of a boyhood that’s not preparing our males for a resilient life in a world where things are harder, more complicated,” said Reichert, the executive director of the Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives at the University of Pennsylvania.

Because the idea of what a man looks like and how a man behaves is so ingrained, boys are taught to conform from an early age, experts said. From their earliest years, as evidenced in Chu’s work, boys are taught to adhere to stereotypical gender norms reinforced through comments like “boys don’t cry,” “toughen up,” and “don’t be a girl.” 

“It starts with mothers having a fear of turning their son into a mama’s boy, so they push them away at young ages — 3 and 4 years old. Go play with your dad, go play with your older male siblings,” Joseph Derrick Nelson, an associate professor in the department of educational studies at Swarthmore College, told Vox. Fathers, for their part, tend to emphasize self-defense, goal pursuit, and overcoming adversity with their sons, Reichert said. Black boys in particular are perceived as older and less innocent than their white counterparts, only pushing them further toward rigid gender roles, Nelson said. If they don’t conform, they may be teased by other boys.

A large part of proving yourself as a “real boy” means rejecting anything deemed feminine, including emotional vulnerability and relationships. As babies and young children, boys and girls are equally emotionally expressive, but by the time they start school, boys show fewer emotions and use less emotional language. When boys are taught that showing their feelings or forging deep friendships is girly, they stop prioritizing those relationships. That shift happens during the teen years, when boys go from reporting having best friends with whom they can share their deepest secrets, to feeling like they’ve drifted apart from these very connections by the end of high school. And it’s not for lack of desire, Chu said, or some inherent biological difference: Boys have simply learned not to show their need for affection, to hide their sadness, to not be tender. 

A new paradigm for raising boys, experts said, begins with how masculinity is first presented at home and in school. 

To encourage boys to be better in touch with their emotions means adults should not pit masculinity against femininity, Christopher Reigeluth, an associate professor at Oregon Health and Science University, told Vox. This goes beyond simply telling boys not to conceal their feelings, but making clear that confiding these feelings in a friend and fostering platonic connections isn’t girly: it’s a universal human need. 

In schools, specialized emotional education in curricula can help boys express their emotions and embrace vulnerability. 

Simply talk to them 

One of the easiest ways to do this is to allow and encourage boys to engage in an activity traditionally seen as more feminine: talking.

Reichert, the psychologist, has led an emotional literacy program in a boys’ school for over 30 years. In that time, he’s seen the sentiment among students shift from skepticism to genuine interest. “It has become, by 2026, the most popular program in the school,” Reichert said, due to an increased cultural awareness of emotional health. In the group, students discuss their daily stressors and hardships, and they learn that letting their peers see them for who they are — connecting with them — benefits their well-being. 

Before joining Reichert’s peer counseling group, high school senior Chris Burnetta expressed his emotions on the field. “You’re almost allowed to be emotional when you’re playing sports, and you’re not allowed to be emotional when you’re not,” Burnetta, 18, told Vox. In middle school, he attended a co-ed school and found himself performing aspects of masculinity to impress his female classmates. But once he met older classmates who he respected and wanted to emulate, he discovered many of them attended the counseling group and encouraged him to go, too. “I don’t want to speak for everyone, but I think for guys in general, looking up at people above you gives you a big impression and a big influence on how you want to live your life and what you want to be like,” he said. 

Seeing his peers so enthusiastically discuss their struggles and triumphs helps foster maturity and gives him permission to show his emotions, Burnetta said, an outlet he never had before.

Adolescence, a time when many behavioral health patterns are forged or discarded, is the time to engrain healthy social habits in boys — and for parents to be explicit, Matt Englar-Carlson, a professor of counseling and the director of the Center for Boys and Men at California State University Fullerton, told Vox. Now is the time to have dedicated phone-free time as a family, to give them opportunities to share how they’re feeling without fixing their problems, to listen to them even when they’re frustrating you. When his own son was younger, Englar-Carlson thought he knew all the tricks: showing empathy, trying to help. “Me doing that with him actually was making him feel worse, I think,” he said. Instead, Englar-Carlson took a lighter touch. He would acknowledge when his son was upset, but wouldn’t press a conversation. Whenever his son was ready to talk, he was available.

One easy way to do this? Talk to them when you’re driving. As my colleague Rachel Miller previously reported, not having to make direct eye contact can make it a little easier for kids to be vulnerable. 

And if you’re a man, make sure you’re leading by example: Be willing to share your own moments of embarrassment, disappointment, and sadness, so they know it’s okay for them to do the same.  

Help them foster non-romantic intimacy 

While in school, boys have ample avenues for connection through classes and sports, even if they aren’t interacting with others on a deeper level. It’s when they lose access to these organized outlets for socialization in adulthood that they slide into isolation or start looking to their romantic partners to fulfill all of their social needs. 

The idea that emotional intimacy is reserved for your significant other is how society gets to a point where 15 percent of men say they don’t have any close friends. Those without a partner are even more adrift: Men are less satisfied being single than their female counterparts. “We teach boys to not ask for help…figure it out on their own,” Nelson said. “I don’t know why we’re surprised when they become adult men and struggle with building relationships and close and connected communities, because all they’ve been taught, even since they were young children, was about figuring it out on their own and denying emotions, suppressing emotions, that then leaves you not in relationship and quite lonely.”

In the absence of in-person friendships, digital spaces provide an attractive alternative. While not altogether negative, some online forums — interactive video games, sports gambling, the manosphere — enable young men to further retreat from society. While pursuing community, boys may find their way to adult-centric spaces, which can be rife with misogynistic and patriarchal messages, feeding the belief that the only way to advance is through hyperconsumption, materialism, looksmaxxing, and dominating women, Nelson said. “They’re quarantining themselves to their rooms and their tech devices and these online communities where they play video games, they gamble on sports, and they have conversations with other boys and young men online about somehow feeling disadvantaged as men in our society,” he said.

Burnetta, the high school senior, said he and many of his classmates’ feeds are populated with “super masculine” content that sometimes pokes fun at men who open up about their feelings, which can further add to the stereotype that men should not be emotional. 

Even if boys don’t necessarily agree with these sentiments, they often don’t have other alternatives online. “I don’t think a lot of boys go on to YouTube…and say, ‘I really want to find the most misogynistic content I can find. That’s what I’m looking for,’” said Englar-Carlson, the director of the Center for Boys and Men. They may have simply wanted to watch a video about sports but were fed an ad for betting and then fell down the rabbit hole. Because traditional masculinity content is often fed to boys via their social media feeds, a brief introduction to these themes only leads to more. 

By young adulthood, they will have a fairly concrete idea of what’s expected of them as a man. In a 2017 study, young men largely agreed that the cornerstones of masculinity are self-sufficiency, toughness, physical attractiveness, being a financial provider, heterosexuality, hypersexuality, aggression, and control. Notably, they said they feel external pressure from family, friends, and society to meet these ideals.

If adults start with the understanding that boys are emotional and they have the same social needs as girls, they can encourage them to make friends before they learn otherwise. 

Teachers can recognize the signs of loneliness in young boys (resisting authority, talking back, and challenging boundaries) and use it as an opportunity to connect with their students instead of reprimanding them — because when they feel heard, their behavior softens. “What are these behaviors communicating to me from this boy about a met or unmet need, and how can I be responsive to it in my classroom? How can I help them facilitate close and connected friendships with not only their peers, but also with me as their teacher, like a primary adult in their lives?” Nelson said. When young boys simply get kicked out of class, they might fall behind and internalize a “bad boy” persona, he said, a cycle that enforces stereotypes and comes at the cost of their education. 

The story of masculinity online and from political leaders is that men must be protectors, high earners, and muscular and strong, and when boys fail to meet that standard (which they inevitably do because they are children), they are made to feel inadequate. “They’re struggling in school, they’re having a difficult time finding work, but everything about what they’re learning about to live in America is about the dream, the aspirations, acquiring, hitting these life milestones,” Nelson said.

Demonstrate an alternative masculinity

But for some young men, the most impactful interventions take place while they’re young. Growing up, Michael Dean looked to his father and his friends’ fathers for how to be a man. These men often spoke of the importance of providing for a family, being decisive, and being a stable force. Dean thought everyone was raised with these values and had similar upbringings until he reached high school and joined Reichert’s peer counseling program.

His junior year, one of Dean’s teammates on the football team suggested that some of the young men check out the group to discuss any problems at school, issues with parents, friends, or partners. Dean was frustrated with his performance on the field and decided to attend. Hearing from his classmates — their grief, their struggles — helped give him perspective. He also learned how to be an emotional outlet for the people he loves, including his younger brother. 

“I never felt that I had to be some kind of way or be some kind of man based on traditional values of being that strong, tough guy and to keep persevering through. I could definitely see that through my dad, and I did have that belief for a little while as I was in middle school and in the beginning of high school,” Dean, now 21, told Vox. “I learned that that’s not necessarily what it means to be a man, and I can make my own judgment through my own experiences and listening to other people to help me figure out what it means in my own belief to be a man.”

For Dean, learning how to be a man began when he was a child, but his path to adulthood was punctuated by formative adults — his mother, Reichert, and yes, even his dad — who fostered a safe environment to be vulnerable and emotional. Now, when he’s lonely, he knows he can call his family, friends, or his girlfriend for support. These are the outlets experts hope men feel empowered to call upon.

“If we’re really going to make a bigger difference with having healthier men who have connected friendships, who are emotionally expressive and connected in their friendships,” Reigeluth said, “it’s got to start with boys.”

Lisa Marie Wilson matched with a man on a dating app who claimed to be 5-foot-10 and to live on the beach. Only one of those facts turned out to be true. When she showed up to the date, Wilson observed that she and her date were the same height — and she isn’t 5-foot-10. She wasn’t planning to mention it, but her date did: “He told me I wasn’t really 5-foot-9,” Wilson, a 51-year-old author, told Vox.

Even though he accused her of lying about her height before he even said hello, Wilson told Vox she still gave the man the benefit of the doubt. But as they continued on with their planned walk along the beach, Wilson sensed her date was suspicious of her. “The whole time it was like he was an investigative reporter asking me questions, but kind of like if you were interviewing someone you didn’t like,” she said. 

By the end of the date, Wilson was sure she didn’t want to see this guy again, so she turned down his offer to give her a massage and left. She couldn’t get past his accusatory comment about her height. “I was like, ‘I’m not a liar,’” Wilson said. “But I think he was — because he obviously wasn’t as tall as he was saying he was.” (To add insult to injury, Wilson’s date emailed her the next day breaking things off with her.)

If you’ve been on a date recently, the phrase “love is a battlefield” might seem a fitting descriptor for the sordid state of romantic affairs. 

According to this year’s Kinsey Institute Singles in America Survey, the percentage of singles with a “checklist” of what they’re looking for in a partner rose from 25 percent in 2021 to 34 percent in 2026. Dating has also become even more partisan this year, another survey found: A date’s political affiliation, especially if it conflicts with their own, is a major dealbreaker. This year, traditional gender roles and values have made a return, hardening some people’s idea of what romance looks like — a dynamic where a woman is pursued by a man with an absurdly strong jaw — and warping the expectations that women have of men and vice versa. Daters are also increasingly using AI to chat with matches on apps and bots’ infiltration of dating apps might have you questioning who you’re even chatting with in the first place. 

It stands to reason that we’ve forgotten how to be human — and some of the basic rules of human decency — in our love lives. Relationship experts, historians, and critics agreed: Dating feels different now.

TikTok has only added fuel to the fire. A popular outlet for singles to share their gripes, the platform has given rise to new dating vernacular — rosters, breadcrumbing, goblintimacy. These new dynamics seeped into the dates themselves, with people openly antagonistic and confrontational from the jump. 

Experts say that if your goal is to find love, or even just have a night of fun, assuming the worst of others — as so many seem to do right now — isn’t an effective strategy. “If you’re eternally suspicious, that tends to be a boundary to attraction,” Paul Eastwick, a psychology professor at the University of California Davis and author of Bonded by Evolution: The New Science of Love and Connection, told Vox. 

The consequence of such hostility in dating is less tolerance — for ordinary friction, for learning lessons, for romance itself. So, what’s a single in 2026 to do?

The problem with dating right now

Most of modern dating followed a predictable pattern: Two singles met at church or at school or at work or at a party hosted by a mutual friend or through family. They might continue to see each other in social settings, gradually growing accustomed to one another’s personality, quirks, interests, until one person (usually the man, if they were straight) asked out the other on a date. Because they had mutual friends or coworkers in common, there was someone to vouch for them, to give some context to their life. 

Since the early 2010s, the most popular way to meet a potential romantic partner has been through online dating. App users are exposed to swaths of people they might not have ordinarily met without having to leave the comfort of their homes, meaning they are going on dates with virtual strangers. The sussing-out phase — where your perception of a person grows from simply “hot woman” to “Amy, the funny blonde from my dodgeball team” — has been condensed or eliminated altogether. “It’s not like, I got to know this person naturally,” Eastwick, also the co-host of the podcast Love Factually, said. “When somebody is a stranger, it’s maybe a little easier to come in with whatever negative assumptions you’ve gleaned from these online spaces.”

Life as a whole in the US has become more combative and tense in the past decade, from political polarization to increasingly rude behavior. At work, our labor and time is extracted until we’re laid off; at home, we’re suspicious of our neighbors. And dating is inherently vulnerable, rife with rejection and negative consequences. 

Dating apps have played a huge role in this dramatic shift in tenor. While effective at connecting users with multiple eligible singles, apps don’t encourage slow-burn connections, which is how humans have historically grown attracted to one another. And when a date goes awry, terrible tales can be mined for engagement online, where commenters are quick to validate a unique experience as universal, often reinforcing gendered stereotypes, like “all men are toxic” and “all women are shallow.”  

People have historically commiserated over their romantic lives as a way of bonding: Think of men in bars with their buddies bemoaning the old ball and chain, women lamenting their husbands not shouldering their share of household labor. During the feminist movement of the 1970s, women gathered to validate each other’s experiences and consider political responses to sexist issues, according to Rebecca Davis, a professor of history and women and gender studies at the University of Delaware. Social media now fulfills many of the same functions as these in-person conversations, Davis told Vox; people can take to TikTok or Reddit to share their frustrating or traumatic experiences, and comment sections are populated with others sharing their own similar stories. But unlike in the relatively private spaces of the past, these gripes now spread from individual to individual with little context, follow-up questions, or nuance.

Instead, posts beget more posts. Algorithms reward extreme content and creators may embellish details to encourage engagement. Whether intentionally or not, TikToks about how coffee dates signify low effort and Reddit threads parroting misogynist language perpetuate harmful stereotypes. “People are good at finding a reason to externalize the difficulty of dating,” the writer Asa Seresin told Vox. It’s much easier to assume the people you date are altogether bad than it is to assess your own actions.

In a viral essay published in 2019, Seresin gave the outward disdain with heterosexuality a name: heteropessimism. Since then, dating culture has only gotten more dismal, he said, in large part due to a national regression toward conservative views of gender and sexuality. The overturning of Roe v. Wade, contentious debates over transgender rights, and a generation of young men who believe a woman should obey her husband have become a dark cloud over the world of romance.

Some of these more traditional beliefs have filtered into 33-year-old Brittni Kristine’s dating life. After only a few weeks of dating, a man Kristine had met on an app asked her to be exclusive, but his actions suggested he wasn’t fully invested. Whenever Kristine inquired about their plans for the week, the guy would get irritated. “His defense mechanism was essentially like, ‘Well, I didn’t tell you I wasn’t seeing you next week, so why would you assume?’” Kristine told Vox.

Over the course of the month they dated, Kristine and the man got into multiple arguments of this nature until she’d grown exasperated with his stonewalling. His antagonism, Kristine suspected, stemmed from a puritanical view of sex and romance, where casually dating is seen as a moral failure. “I’ve had so many people tell me, ‘If I go on a first date with you and I find out that you have gone on another date in the past two weeks, basically I would never talk to you again because you’re promiscuous,’” she said.

These off-putting experiences fuel heteropessimism. A key aspect of heteropessimism, the pervasive embarrassment with which some young women express being attracted to men, only adds to a cycle of shame that makes people feel guilty for who they’re attracted to, Davis said. This has led some to internalize the idea that queer relationships are easier or more ideal. “When women talk about division of labor…it makes sense that there’s a longing for a relationship where the gender division of labor isn’t at play,” Seresin said. “I actually do think that is one way in which queer relationships are a lot easier, but I wouldn’t say that overall queer relationships are easier.”

Negative stereotypes and preemptive defensiveness plague queer relationships, too, Seresin said. “A lot of gay men also say, ‘I wish I wasn’t into men,’ and will blame a culture of very casual intimacy on being unable to find a boyfriend,” Seresin said. “A lot of lesbians will blame there not being enough queer women out there or enough of their type.”

The result is a population of singles, regardless of who they’re attracted to, walking into dating scenarios with strangers who they might already be suspicious of.  

Dating with walls up

As soon as his date walked through the coffee shop doors recently, Alex Alberti told Vox he sensed an air of negativity. “Literally from the jump, he kind of felt on the defensive and a little bit guarded from just buying coffee,” the 35-year-old education researcher said. Even a change of scenery on their walk around a nearby lake did not help matters. Alberti remembered his date venting about his dating troubles: how shallow and rude and awful the men were. About halfway through the get-together, Alberti decided there would not be another.

It was clear to Alberti that his date was letting past negative experiences color his current one. But instead of protecting him, drawing attention to bad behavior only pushed Alberti away. “I think people believe that if they can just beat the bad thing to the punch by calling it out, they’re going to make themselves safer,” he said. “When someone approaches a first date being highly skeptical and highly guarded and even a little bit combative, they think that it’s going to serve as a helpful filter.”

When you approach other people with distrust and ire instead of openness and curiosity, forging genuine connections turns into a monumental undertaking. People tend to like folks they feel comfortable opening up to, and the gradual revelations and bits of your interior life you show each other are what foster attraction. Fearing someone will weaponize your vulnerability against you turns dating into a surface-level endeavor at best, or, at worst, a contentious battle no one can possibly win.

The walls people put up are meant to be protective: You can’t hurt me if I never let you in to begin with. And the youngest prospective daters are dating even less in 2026: One recent study found that more than half of single young adults, ages 22 to 35, said past breakups made them more reluctant to pursue new relationships. Those are just the ones who’ve had previous romantic experiences. A Pew Research Center survey found that about a third of singles who have never married have never been in a committed romantic relationship to begin with.

When daters lack experience and are primed to see the worst in each other, the very normal aspects of courtship — negotiating boundaries, establishing trust, navigating conflict — are seen as dealbreakers. “There’s a growing discomfort with the normal friction, that if you say or do the wrong thing, it’s cringe, it’s disqualifiable; there’s no appetite for any kind of misstep,” Daniel Cox, the director of the Survey Center on American Life and author of Generation Uncoupled: America’s New Gender Divide and the Crisis of Human Connection, told Vox.

This is an impossibly high bar to clear and runs contrary to how many relationships form, Eastwick, the psychology professor, said. Most people’s affection for another person grows the more they get to know them. But if you’re meeting a stranger from an app who you assume has nefarious intentions, that first date isn’t likely to turn into a second.

Letting your guard down

Trauma and past negative experiences, both your own and others, can be a helpful teacher, a useful framework for what to avoid, and what lessons could be gleaned from pain. But it can also be distorting, Seresin, the writer, said. One bad relationship or date doesn’t mean all future relationships and dates with a similar type of person will be doomed. “It’s almost like if you’ve had a bad experience and you want to protect yourself, that’s almost morally good,” Seresin said.

Instead of focusing on avoiding any bad feelings (an impossible task), singles should question their own assumptions and operate from a place of curiosity. Resist the urge to cast judgment based on what little you know of someone. Even couples who have been married for decades can still discover new things about their partner. “It’s very easy to think, ‘I know exactly how this person thinks. I know what they want. I know how they’re trying to manipulate me,’” Seresin said.

The process of getting to know someone is a risk. All relationships come with potential disappointment; there will always be a person who ghosts or makes a bad joke or minimizes your accomplishments. But it doesn’t mean that person represents all men or all women, that they’re the enemy, that these connections are inherently toxic or not worth pursuing in the first place. 

To find love, we have to turn down the instinct to protect ourselves and open ourselves to the possibility that the person across the table might also be a flawed human who’s been hurt before. And they might want the same thing, too.

Over the years, Julianne Holt-Lunstad has fielded many requests from startups looking for her help. These entrepreneurs came to the Brigham Young University professor with the well-meaning goal of “solving” loneliness; they believed their app or company could help consumers build genuine connections, and wanted Holt-Lunstad’s opinion on this feature or that business tactic. 

Across the pond, University College London professor Noreena Hertz was getting the same calls. They wanted her to join their boards, to advise them, to give their proof of concept a stamp of approval. 

“Of the many startups who’ve approached me, and it’s probably about 50 or 60 in the space,” Hertz told Vox, “there hasn’t been one where I felt convinced by their business model.”

That CEOs and founders were clamoring to pick the brains of these two women is entirely predictable — their work may have been the basis on which these startups were founded. Holt-Lunstad is among the most cited academics who study loneliness and social connection. The commonly repeated stat that loneliness is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day? That came from her research. She was the lead science editor on the Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory on loneliness and isolation. As for Hertz, in her 2020 book The Lonely Century: How to Restore Human Connection in a World That’s Pulling Apart, she coined the phrase “loneliness economy,” at the time, a fledgling market of niche services, like friends for rent and professional cuddling.

In the years since Hertz gave it a name, the loneliness economy has only ballooned. As public attention to loneliness has mounted — despite the fact that research doesn’t consistently show whether a loneliness epidemic exists in the first place — the market stepped in to offer solutions. No longer are the lonely limited to joining a running club, they can now rent friends and cuddlers. They can hire a coach to help vanquish loneliness and build a community. (One charges $3,000 for a three-month program.) They can attend a $1,000 weekend-long summer camp to make friends (with the option to pay in installments via Klarna). They can buy a $250 pendant that listens to their every word and can communicate back via voice or text. They can join a coworking space meant to quell loneliness with a nearly $300 a month price tag. They can enroll in a bootcamp for how to be less shy, hop in a group travel excursion with other solo venturers, download an app where AI pairs you with other strangers for activities. Loneliness is no longer a societal issue with mental and physical costs and structural solutions but one businesses hope consumers can buy their way out of.

But is it possible to disrupt the slow burn that is making a friend? To outsource the intimacies of friendship to AI? To put a price tag on human connection? 

“I would caution developers to really critically evaluate their business model and the barriers to who they’re actually reaching,” Holt-Lunstad told Vox. “Think about ways that [connection] can occur organically without monetizing it.”

The cottage industry of loneliness services is just another example of capitalism wrapping its tentacles around human desire. But in most cases, the cost of the app, or product, or experience is going to be much higher than the possibility of eliminating loneliness.

One person’s loneliness is another’s business opportunity

Since the early 2000s when Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam warned of the decline of civic and social spaces in his seminal work Bowling Alone, we have witnessed the “privatization of community,” according to Sam Pressler, a fellow at the Harvard Human Flourishing Program who studies community, connection, and class. Gathering spaces shifted away from places of worship and union halls to boutique fitness centers and private, members-only clubs. “There was already this dynamic in place where you could, at a premium level, sell people on community,” Pressler said.

The pandemic pushed the loneliness economy into overdrive. Widespread social isolation enabled researchers to study perceived levels of loneliness during lockdowns. Media coverage of loneliness outlined its harms. Although Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general during the Obama and Biden administrations, first referred to loneliness as a “health epidemic” in 2017, his 2023 report opened the door for other iterations: the male loneliness epidemic, the Gen Z well-being slump, a worsening midlife crisis. Over the past five years, search interest in the loneliness epidemic grew over 600 percent.

Naturally, the startup world began to see a business opportunity, Pressler said. WeWork founder Adam Neumann launched a new residential real estate company with a goal of “solving loneliness” and $350 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz. The app 222, which uses AI to pair strangers for group activities based on personality-based questions, raised $10 million in funding. “You then get this anchor within startup land that really has an approach of solve customers’ problems and pain points, in that loneliness is a customer problem or pain point to be solved, through productized market solutions,” Pressler said.

Brian Choi had heard of the male loneliness epidemic, but luckily didn’t feel like he fell into that category. He grew up in the Los Angeles area, where he still lives, and has plenty of friends, but he signed up for 222 several years ago as a way to supplement his social life and meet people who might be interested in activities his existing friends aren’t.

“Dance, for me, means a lot,” the 34-year-old video game character artist, told Vox. “For my best friends, hard to sell them on that. So 222 is a good angle on sharing that experience with other people who are presumably also open to dance.”

But most of the platform’s events, Choi found, were centered around dinner and drinks, which didn’t appeal to him. If there was a meetup with an interactive element, like brunch and a pottery class, he was more likely to engage. But despite attending about a dozen 222 events over the years, Choi hasn’t fostered any serious friendships. “It’s dependent on individuals to be proactive about inviting folks into their lives after the 222 event,” Choi said. “And that can be scary for a lot of people.” 

Once a market emerged for loneliness-adjacent services and products, influencers started promoting them. Over the last few years, the content creator Zaid Khan observed his peers hosting “community” events that seemed well-meaning enough until a few common themes emerged: The events seemed to be furthering the creators’ brands, they often came with a ticket price, and they were attended mostly by young, white people. This widespread commodification of community is what Hertz refers to as “WeWashing” — like greenwashing — because an occasional knitting club with a $50 fee does not a community make. 

Charging any sort of premium for a social event or service runs the risk of exacerbating inequities. According to Holt-Lunstad’s research, people with only a high school education or less or those who made less than $75,000 a year were less socially connected than those with higher education and incomes. People who stand to benefit the most from interventions to build relationships often can’t afford a $200 a month gym, or lack the time to swipe for friends. These spaces can then become, like Khan observed, homogenized by race, class, and ability. “I’m sorry, but young, attractive, white, straight, 20-somethings living in New York will have no issue. … You can walk into any West Village bar and meet those people,” Khan said. “It’s excluding the people who, I think, genuinely could need it.”

“Masking” a symptom

There is a contradiction at the heart of the loneliness economy: the need for human connection in the modern world is difficult to solve, let alone value and commodify. In order to make money, companies either have to charge top dollar for their social club or camp, or, they need their product to be used by as many people as possible, as often as possible, which inherently flies in the face of how relationships are fostered. 

“The ethical problem begins when a company intentionally exploits a consumer’s loneliness, insecure attachment, or fear of missing out to pressure that person into purchasing.”

Cindy Rippé, Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia

Relationships are projects of patience. They unfold after repeated interactions in a physical space, after slow revelations and disclosures and laughs. The loneliness economy isn’t built on unhurried bonding. Instead of consistently showing up to a community event and slowly building connections, some apps are effective at connecting users with strangers for one-time events, but are less focused on encouraging users to exchange numbers and hang out again. “We know from the research that relationships take time to develop, and that there needs to be consistency also over time. When you get to know someone, it takes time,” Holt-Lunstad said. “If you’re only doing it sporadically or once, that’s going to be less likely. If it’s all virtual, that’s going to be less likely.”

Just like hunger and thirst cue you to eat and drink, loneliness is a sign to interact. Swiping for friends may feel productive and occupy time, but without actually hanging out, it may just be a distraction, Holt-Lunstad said. “What I worry is that [apps] may be effective in masking that symptom without actually fulfilling any social needs,” she said. “It would be like no longer feeling thirsty, but we’re not actually drinking any water.”

The loneliness economy also fails to take into account the barriers preventing people from making friends in the first place. In recent surveys, the results of which have not been published, Holt-Lunstad has found both internal and external obstacles to connection, including anxiety, a fear of rejection, physical and mental health limitations, the economic cost of participation, and the time investment required with joining a club. “It might be, that’s a great program, but it’s too far away, or that’s a great program, but it costs too much,” Holt-Lunstad said. “And then, of course, there’s the internal barriers where there’s so much shame and stigma associated with this that many people don’t want to feel like I have to have an app or a program to make friends.”

These potentially lonely consumers may be more vulnerable to companies’ marketing efforts, even though the products are unlikely to solve the underlying issue. According to research, when people feel like they are lacking close, intimate relationships, they are more likely to buy themselves things. “One of the things, for instance, could be spending money to go on group activities rather than individual activities,” Aulona Ulqinaku, an associate professor of marketing at Università Carlo Cattaneo LIUC in Italy, told Vox. People could spend money to join a club you aren’t particularly interested in just to feel a part of something. 

Shopping can also serve as a social experience in itself, Cindy Rippé, a senior lecturer in the Department of Marketing at the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia, told Vox in an email. Employees and other patrons can become familiar and friendly faces, effectively turning a retail space into a third place. A paid social experience, such as a club, could theoretically achieve the same fulfilling effects as shopping, Rippé said. But spending money isn’t what makes people feel better; it’s repeated social interaction, familiarity, belonging.

Because companies can track your activity online, users who search for local clubs or interact with these groups on social media may be repeatedly served ads for other community-centric businesses and thus spend more money on services that may not be effective.

“I hope that we are looking at a world where marketing can be looked at as an instrument for helping people rather than exploiting people,” Ulqinaku said. “The aim should not be, ‘I make money [off] of you.’ The aim should be, ‘I want to make you feel better. I don’t want to exploit you.’”

Putting a price tag on relationships

The pairing of lonely consumers who might be willing to spend money and businesses that definitely want to make it may be good for the bottom line in the short-term, but perhaps not for social health or for revenue in the long-term. (After all, if these products don’t work, people will stop paying for them, and if they do work as promised, people will also stop paying for them.) Friendship isn’t a product you can advertise or put a dollar amount to, Pressler said, and we shouldn’t apply market solutions to non-market goods.

“You can approach it with a consumptive mindset where it’s like, ‘Well, I just need to consume more relationships, and if I consume more relationships, ergo, I will not be lonely or disconnected,’” he said — but that’s not how real-world interactions work. The power imbalance between the companies earning money and the consumer spending it to fulfill a core human need may veer on exploitative, too, Rippé said: “The ethical problem begins when a company intentionally exploits a consumer’s loneliness, insecure attachment, or fear of missing out to pressure that person into purchasing.”

Which isn’t to say communal gatherings with a price tag are inherently exploitative. Live music and events, like concerts, successfully bring people together for shared experiences, according to Hertz, the professor and author. (Of course, tickets have become so expensive that seeing your favorite act perform is becoming a luxury.) Groups centered around an activity have the potential to connect people, too. But buying your own yarn and needles to bring to a weekly craft night at your local knitting shop is different from paying $50 to join a one-off “knitting club” organized by a VC-backed friendship app.

Because social health touches so many aspects of life — the physical spaces we inhabit, the technology that both facilitates and inhibits socialization, the costs of interacting — the path toward connection is more complex than marketable products or individual purchases. It involves government investment in public spaces and low- or no-cost community events; policies that allow everyone to lead a dignified life, which includes the space for leisure activities; and a societal shift that prioritizes slow, intentional relationship building instead of instant connection. 

“The need is real,” Hertz said. “The purported solutions are many. Some of them I think can be part of the solution. Some of them may well end up making us lonelier as a society.”

This story was originally published in The Highlight. To get access to member-exclusive stories like this every month, become a Vox Member today.