Think about the last first date you went on. How much did you know about the other person before you sat down?
If you’re Gen X or a boomer, the answer was probably a first name, a job, and whatever the friend who set you up felt like mentioning. You ordered a drink because that’s what people did. When the check came, everyone at the table already knew whose hand was supposed to reach for it.
A 25-year-old heading out tonight has already done a deep dive through her date’s Instagram. She’s ordering a mocktail. She might ask, somewhere between the appetizer and the main course, whether he’s ever been to therapy. None of it feels unusual to her. It’s what careful dating looks like.
Her parents see it differently.
The same split shows up in what each generation considers a normal marriage, and it starts well before anyone gets engaged. What looks like good sense to one side of the dinner table looks like overthinking to the other, and neither side is budging much.
Gen Z prefers first dates without alcohol, and older generations still expect a drink
For most of the last 50 years, a first date meant a bar or a restaurant with a wine list. The drink did a job. It gave nervous people something to hold, and it loosened up a conversation between two strangers.
Gen Z is opting out of that, and in large numbers.
In a late 2025 survey of roughly 30,000 Hinge users, 67% of Gen Z daters said they want to build romantic connections without relying on alcohol over the next year.
So when a 60-year-old hears that his daughter’s date was coffee and a walk, it can sound like the date didn’t really count. To him, a first date without a drink sounds more like an interview. The drink was how you got past the awkward part.
Gen Z’s answer is that they’d rather not skip the awkward part. They want to remember the date, and to know the chemistry was real.
Tara Suwinyattichaiporn, a relationship coach and tenured professor at California State University, Fullerton, told Fox News that sober dating lets people “make conscious relationship and sex decisions.”
To a generation that watched plenty of adults make big decisions after a few drinks, that clarity is the entire point.
Gen Z looks up a date online before meeting, and older generations see it as distrust
For older daters, not knowing much going in was part of the deal. You learned about someone by asking questions. Looking into a person behind their back felt like skipping the part where you get to know them.
For Gen Z, looking someone up is just part of getting ready.
The 2026 Singles in America study from the Kinsey Institute and Match found that 50% of Gen Z singles research a date online before meeting in person. Most use social media. More than a third use Google, and 29% run background checks.
To a boomer, a background check before coffee sounds paranoid. To a 24-year-old woman, it sounds like common sense, and the numbers explain why.
A Pew Research Center survey found that 56% of women under 50 who have used dating apps had been sent sexually explicit messages or images they didn’t ask for, and 11% had been threatened with physical harm. Those experiences were less common among women 50 and older.
The research doesn’t replace the date, though.
Nearly half of singles in the Kinsey study said they’d fallen for someone they weren’t initially attracted to. As Kinsey Institute executive director Justin Garcia put it in the study’s release, “Knowing what matters to you doesn’t mean knowing exactly who you’ll fall for.”
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Gen Z talks about money early, and boomers and Gen X consider it private
Ask a boomer when it’s appropriate to bring up salary with someone you’re dating, and you might get a long pause. Money was something you sorted out after the wedding, if at all. Asking earlier made it look like you were shopping.
Gen Z sees the question as basic information.
In a Talker Research survey of 2,000 singles conducted for Chime, half of Gen Z and millennial respondents said they find it attractive when a date is open about how much they make. Only 37% of Gen X and 23% of boomers agreed.
The same survey found that 42% of boomers and 45% of Gen X still believe the man should pay for a date.
Gen Z isn’t completely done with that rule either, since 36% agree. But they’re more likely than any other generation to say whoever planned the date should pay, or that the bill should be split evenly.
To older daters, a split check can feel like a lack of effort, and they’re not entirely wrong to read something into it. The Kinsey study found that offering to split the bill has become an increasingly common way to signal you don’t want a second date.
To Gen Z, it’s usually just one less thing to guess about. Usually.
Gen Z wants a partner who has been to therapy, and older generations rarely went themselves
For a lot of boomers, mentioning therapy on a date would have sounded like a confession. It meant something was wrong with you, and you didn’t lead with that.
Gen Z treats it more like a reference.
The same Kinsey study found that about half of Gen Z and millennial singles want a partner who has been to therapy.
Many older adults would have failed that standard at the same age.
A 2023 survey from the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life found that 27% of Gen Z adults talked to a therapist at some point during their teen years. That dropped to 20% for millennials, 10% for Gen X, and 4% for boomers.
Psychologists see why the younger approach makes sense, and where it can go wrong.
Jeremy Goshorn, an assistant professor of psychology at Lebanon Valley College, says Gen Z sees talking about mental health needs as “a normal component of early relationship formation.” He also cautions that sharing too much, too soon, without thinking about the listener can tip into trauma dumping and damage a new relationship.
That’s the part older skeptics tend to pick up on. Knowing the vocabulary isn’t the same as doing the work, and a first date isn’t a session.
Each generation’s dating rules came from the risks it grew up with
None of the older habits were random. A drink eased the nerves of two strangers who knew almost nothing about each other. A man picking up the check signaled he was serious, back when he was usually the one with the bigger paycheck. Not digging into someone’s past was a way of giving them a fair start.
Gen Z’s habits answer a different set of problems.
They’re meeting strangers through apps instead of through friends. They’re dating on tight budgets. They grew up with mental health as an everyday topic instead of a family secret.
Underneath all of it, both sides want the same thing. The Kinsey researchers found that across ages and genders, nearly everyone is looking for a long-term partner they can trust and laugh with.
The generations just disagree about what you’re allowed to ask, look up, and say out loud on the way there.
