JD Vance Declares That Americans Shouldn’t Use ‘Destructive’ Dating Apps for This Reason

In a new interview, Vance shared his concerns with online dating and what it means for families

NEED TO KNOW

• Vice President JD Vance spoke with The New York Times about the growth and consequences of artificial intelligence in a May 21 interview.
• During the conversation, he said he’s more concerned with technology’s impact on dating
• He claimed that technology has made it more difficult for people to communicate with each other, and attributes that to “destructive” dating apps

Vice President JD Vance is taking a stand against dating apps.

On Wednesday, May 21, the politician discussed artificial intelligence in an interview with The New York Times. Although Vance, 40, said he recognizes that there are concerns with the technology and its economic impact, he said he is more concerned about A.I.’s effect on non-economic factors, including dating.

“If you look at basic dating behavior among young people — and I think a lot of this is that the dating apps are probably more destructive than we fully appreciate,” Vance said. “I think part of it is technology has just for some reason made it harder for young men and young women to communicate with each other in the same way.”

“Our young men and women just aren’t dating, and if they’re not dating, they’re not getting married, they’re not starting families.”

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Vance has previously championed “pronatalism,” or the promotion of reproduction. During the 2024 campaign trail, he said he wanted “more babies in the United States of America” and more “beautiful young men and women” to raise them, The New York Times reported in April 2025.

“There’s a level of isolation, I think, mediated through technology, that technology can be a bit of a salve. It can be a bit of a Band-Aid. Maybe it makes you feel less lonely, even when you are lonely. But this is where I think AI could be profoundly dark and negative,” Vance also said in his interview with the Times on Wednesday.

“But what I do really worry about is does it mean that there are millions of American teenagers talking to chatbots who don’t have their best interests at heart?” he continued.

“Or even if they do have their best interests at heart, they start to develop a relationship, they start to expect a chatbot that’s trying to give a dopamine rush, and, you know, compared to a chatbot, a normal human interaction is not going to be as satisfying, because human beings have wants and needs.”

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Vance also shared that he brought up his concerns about online dating to Pope Leo XIV when he was in Rome for the new pope’s inaugural mass on Sunday, May 18.

Vance’s conversation with the newly elected pope follows the pope’s concerns with the rise of A.I. and the “new industrial revolution,” per Time magazine. Pope Leo explained take the name Leo in honor of Pope Leo XIII, who also dealt with the Catholic response to the 18th-century Industrial Revolution.

Indranee Rajah Opens Up About Being “Single & Not Seeing Anyone” And If She’d Use Dating Apps

The 62-year-old Cabinet minister took on a no-holds-barred interview on CNA’s The Assembly.

Bryan Wong

30 Oct 2025 at 22:02

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CNA’s The Assembly, is having another Singaporean political figure back in the hot seat. This time, it’s Indranee Rajah, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office and Second Minister for Finance who was a guest on the series where a panel of neurodivergent interviewers ask public figures a series of unscripted questions, no holds barred.

Things started formally enough, with questions about the Cabinet minister’s political career and role models. Then one interviewer boldly asked if the 62-year-old was single, or dating anyone.

“I’m still single, and not seeing anybody in that sense that you mean. I think you mean dating, right?” Indranee replied with a laugh.

Another interviewer then asked if politics has robbed her of a dating life. She replied that politics has given her many opportunities and if it weren’t for it, she might not have been asked to come on The Assembly to meet them.

Indranee entered politics in 2006, where she served as Deputy Speaker of Parliament, a role she held until 2011 before moving on to other ministerial roles. She is currently a Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office.

When asked if she felt like a failure for not being able to settle down, Indranee simply replied: “There were some occasions where relationships don’t go well. Then you start to doubt yourself and say, ‘Is there something wrong with me?’ But after reading up about it, talking to people, and so on, I figured out it is not me per se.

“Sometimes things are just not meant to be. And if they aren’t, they aren’t. But you shouldn’t see that if you don’t have a relationship, that there is something wrong with you. What is most important is that you must be comfortable in your own skin and be happy with who you are,” she added.

Indranee also says it is up to one to ask if they are doing the right thing.

“Is what you are doing particularly nice, or would people react negatively to it, or are there areas where you can do better and improve?,” she says, adding that she has taken a hard look many times on how she could do better.

One interviewer even asked if she would consider using dating apps.

“No, I don’t think so!” replied Indranee.

“I’ve nothing against dating apps. It is just I grew up in an era where this wasn’t a thing, and I’m not sure that it’s for me,” she explained.

Here’s why teens don’t belong on dating apps

Analysis by

Kara Alaimo

Updated Jul 26, 2025

Teens who engage in other risky behaviors are more likely to use dating apps, according to a new study. vgajic/E+/Getty Images/File

Kara Alaimo is an associate professor of communication at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her book “Over the Influence: Why Social Media Is Toxic for Women and Girls — And How We Can Take It Back” was published in 2024 by Alcove Press.

Teenagers are using dating apps more than we previously knew, according to research published this week in the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science. The study found that 23.5% of teens ages 13 through 18 used dating apps over a six-month period, which is more than past estimates.

The study is believed to be the first to track how teens use dating apps by recording their keyboard activity rather than relying on self-reports, according to the researchers.

The study found that teens who used dating apps didn’t generally have more symptoms of mental health challenges after six months than those who didn’t. However, those who used dating apps frequently were more likely to have symptoms of major depressive disorders.

“This study showed some support for dating app users having greater depressive symptoms and greater engagement in risky behaviors,” said Lilian Li, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and the study’s lead author.

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It’s unclear whether that’s because the dating app users were harmed on the apps through things such as exposure to harassment or risky behaviors, Li said, or whether those who were depressed used dating apps because they had trouble connecting with others.

Li cautioned that the study was small — it included 149 teens in the United States, 35 of whom used dating apps. And because it only tracked keyboard entries, it wasn’t able to measure things such as lurking or liking and disliking profiles.

There’s still reason for parents to be concerned, because dating apps could also be harming kids in other ways. That’s why, when I speak to parents and students about how to handle kids’ use of apps, I suggest that teenagers not use online dating platforms at all.

Teens can connect with predators online

Parents should teach teens how to stay safe on dating apps, even if it’s planning for the future. Iuliia Burmistrova/Moment RF/Getty Images/File

One reason I don’t think teens belong on dating apps is because they’re dangerous. Researchers have warned that registered sex offenders freely use online dating sites.

Online dating particularly raises the risk of teens being catfished, manipulated into an emotional relationship with someone using an assumed identity. That creates the opportunity for the other person to convince the teen to share an intimate image, which can then be used for financial extortion or to pressure the victim into further exploitation.

These risks make dating apps dangerous for adults but even more so for teenagers, because the teenage brain is wired to accept greater risks in the pursuit of rewards, according to the UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent.

That’s why it didn’t surprise me that the new research found that teens who engaged in other risky behaviors, such as using substances and breaking rules, were more likely to use dating apps.

We can’t expect teenagers to consider that the person they think is their new boyfriend or girlfriend might actually be an adult cybercriminal. Teens also can’t be expected to think through the potential consequences if they decide to meet up in person with someone they connected with online.

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“Minors are not permitted on our dating apps, full stop,” said a spokesperson for the Match Group, which owns Tinder, the most-used dating app among teens in the study. “Our platforms are for adults 18 and older, and we deploy industry-leading technology and human oversight to keep underage users off them. Our brands deploy sophisticated safety tools including AI-powered age verification, ID verification, and device blocking, as well as human moderators to proactively detect and remove minors and bad actors.

“We work with longstanding partners like THORN to enhance safety measures and, this year, supported the founding of ROOST, a nonprofit focused on building scalable tools for child safety. We continue to invest in cutting-edge tools, technology, and partnerships to help ensure our platforms remain safe for the communities we serve.”

The spokesperson also noted that the Match Group offers a safety tool to conduct background checks on users and that the statistics in the new research include social discovery apps, which are different from dating apps.

Dating apps don’t teach teens to have healthy relationships

Teens who use dating apps frequently are more likely to have greater depressive symptoms, the study found. Georgijevic/E+/Getty Images/File

The problem is not just that dating apps are dangerous, which they can be. They can also send the wrong signals to young people about human relationships.

If you want to establish and maintain a relationship with someone in person, you generally have to learn things like how to have a two-way conversation, show consideration for the other person and even resolve disagreements that might come up.

These are all skills that teens need to practice and which will serve them well in many aspects of their lives. They’ll not only help youth deal with people such as future professors and employers but will likely make them happier over the long run.

Close relationships are even more important for our happiness than things such as money or fame and are also important to our health, Harvard University researchers found in one of the longest studies of adults ever conducted.

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In interviews for my book, people told me they felt dating app users invest less in the relationships they form with their “matches” because the apps convey the impression that there are always more people available to swipe on. “If someone upsets you for the smallest reason, you can go to a dating app and find someone else,” one woman told me.

So teens are learning they can walk away from dating apps feeling like romantic partners are easily obtained and let go, rather than learning to refine skills to maintain close offline relationships.

There are other ways to meet their needs

To start conversations about these concerns, parents should check in with teens on whether they’re using or want to use dating apps. If teens say yes, it’s an opportunity to consider how they can meet their needs in other ways.

For example, if teens are lonely or want to find a romantic partner, one of the best things we can do is let them get together with peers in person. They can connect with friends and even potential romantic partners who share similar interests by signing up for extracurricular activities. It is also an important way of helping teens feel like they matter, which is one of the best means for promoting well-being.

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The new study found that dating apps may give teens who are sexual and gender minorities in their communities ways of making valuable social connections. It would be even better, however, for parents to explore how such teens can make those connections by meeting up with the kinds of people they want to know face-to-face.

Some teens may also want to use dating apps because some platforms have suggested they have algorithms that can match people with their soulmates — or at least compatible romantic partners. However, decades of research tells us this isn’t possible, because it turns out that people’s personality traits don’t actually predict whether they’ll do well as a couple.

Prepare teens for using dating apps in the future

Still, 30% of Americans have used a dating app or site at some point, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, so it’s possible that your teen will find a way to evade your rules against using them now or will use one in the future. That’s why you should talk to teens about how to stay safe on dating apps if they do use them at any point in their lives.

I recommend video chatting with people before meeting up in person to confirm that they appear to be who they say they are, meeting in public places, telling loved ones where you’re meeting, telling the person you’re meeting that your loved ones know where you are, and not being alone with someone until you’re confident you can trust them.

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I know parents think their children would never use a dating app or go meet a stranger they only know online. But since this new research suggests teens are using these apps more than parents may realize, it’s best to be prepared.

Whether teens are just breaking your rules or getting into trouble online, they are missing out on learning to establish healthy relationships face-to-face. That’s why parents should talk to teens now about these concerns, helping them get their dating lives started on the right track instead of merely swiping right.