Scroll any timeline long enough and you’ll hit the same refrain: “Women don’t need men,” “Men don’t need women (except for sex),” “Marriage is a scam.” It’s loud, it’s viral—and it’s shaping how a generation talks about love. But beyond the quotes and quote-tweets, the numbers tell a more complicated story: marriage hasn’t disappeared, it’s just been de-centered, delayed, and redesigned for the algorithm age.

Start with the basics. America still marries—more than 2.0 million weddings were recorded in 2023—but at far lower rates than our grandparents. The CDC’s provisional data put last year’s marriage rate at 6.1 per 1,000 people, well below late-20th-century levels even after the post-pandemic rebound. At the same time, we’re marrying older than ever: the median age at first marriage is now about 30.2 for men and 28.4 for women, a decades-long climb that reflects new norms around education, careers, and personal readiness.

Culturally, marriage has slid down the life-goals leaderboard. In a 2023 Pew study, Americans were far more likely to say a fulfilling life depends on work you enjoy and close friends than on being married or having children. Only about a quarter rated marriage as “extremely” or “very” important to fulfillment. That doesn’t mean people reject commitment—it means they no longer treat marriage as the singular path to a good life.

The internet—and the attention economy it fuels—has poured gasoline on these shifts. About three in ten U.S. adults have used a dating site or app, and roughly one in ten partnered adults say they met their current partner there (for partnered adults under 30, it’s one in five). That’s real impact. But users also report mixed experiences and safety concerns, which shape how people feel about dating, intimacy, and trust in the first place. Algorithms reward snap judgments and constant novelty: endless swipes, instant comparisons, and the illusion that a slightly better option is one thumb-flick away. If you already believe you “don’t need” the other gender, the feed can supply daily confirmation.

Meanwhile, the relationship map itself is changing. The share of adults living without a spouse or partner ticked down slightly from 44% in 2019 to 42% in 2023—so there’s no runaway “singles forever” wave—but the long arc still shows later partnering, more cohabitation, and more people reaching milestones at their own pace. A quarter of 40-year-olds had never married as of 2021—a record high—underscoring how the timetable has stretched.

So where do the viral battle cries fit? For many women, financial independence and wider opportunity have reduced the necessity of marriage; partnership is a want, not a must. For many men, a perceived collapse in trust—and online spaces that normalize transactional framing—can harden into a belief that emotional partnership isn’t worth the risk. Add in housing costs, student debt, and the pressure to be “fully formed” before settling down, and you get a culture where the bar for marriage is higher and later, and the skepticism is louder.

But here’s what the data and the lived reality both suggest: marriage isn’t “over”—it’s becoming more intentional. People who do marry are typically older, more selective, and, research hints, often better positioned for stability. The problem isn’t that young people don’t value love; it’s that the internet has reframed choice as a performance and turned vulnerability into content. That can make real commitment feel countercultural.

If you’re rooting for marriage—not as a mandate, but as a meaningful option—here’s the opportunity:

- Reframe “need” as “value.” Independence is a win. The case for marriage today is about synergy, not dependency: shared vision, pooled resilience, and the freedom that comes from trust.

- Detox the feed. Curate inputs that model healthy, grown-up partnership. (You’ll find fewer hot takes and more habits.)

- Date for alignment, not vibes. Slow down the discovery loop. Depth beats dopamine.

- Name the trade-offs. Choosing a person means choosing constraints. That’s not loss; it’s design.

Is marriage still a thing? Absolutely. It’s just no longer the only thing—or the first thing. In a culture of infinite scroll, the counter-trend is intentionality: two people choosing each other, on purpose, with eyes open. The internet can’t stop you from doing that. It just means you’ll have to scroll past a lot of noise to hear what really matters.