Hi everyone. Welcome to our first-ever CEO Connection event. This is a new series where we'll dive into a topic of particular interest. We're excited to have you here on webcast and live stream. On earnings calls, obviously, we spend most of our time focusing on financial performance and operating metrics. So, this event gives us a chance to go deeper on the consumer insights that inform how we think about the category and our product strategy. We get asked versions of the same question all the time, which is: has Gen Z basically abandoned dating apps? Our answer to that is no, not at all. They still want connection, but their needs around what that connection looks like have evolved. So, today we'll help frame an understanding around Gen Z. This is not a product presentation like our Sparks event, and it's not a quarterly earnings update. It's a discussion on the future of human connection and what we're learning from younger generations, how expectations are evolving, and how those insights inform how we build products across the company. Today's discussion may include forward-looking statements. Some of those risks related to that are listed here and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Before we get into the research, I want to introduce today's speakers. I have with me two of the world's foremost experts on Gen Z and on consumer insights. I'm joined by Emily Dodds, who leads global brand strategy at Tinder. Before coming to Tinder, Emily spent over a decade in creative advertising where she helped brands bridge the gap between culture and data. She helped brands like Meta and AT&T connect with impact to their consumers. And also here with me is Max Eisenberg. Hello, Max. Welcome. Max leads consumer research across Match Group. He has a PhD in public policy with over a decade of peer-reviewed published research on risk perception, vulnerability, and public safety. These are two of the people closest to how young daters are thinking, behaving, and talking about relationships. They spend all their time on research, interviews, focus groups, doing original consumer work behind these insights. So, my role today is to just sort of provide a canvas and highlight what their insights are and lead the discussion and then moderate Q&A. Max.
Great. Thanks, Spencer. Hi all. As Spencer mentioned, today is about understanding how Gen Z is thinking about relationships and connection. We'll first start with an overview of how we're listening to Gen Z across Match Group. Then Emily will walk through the four evolving expectations that we're seeing among Gen Z for how they want to connect. We'll connect those insights with the product evolution we're seeing with Tinder and Hinge in particular. And finally, we'll look ahead at a sneak preview of emerging insights we're seeing amongst Gen Alpha. Then we'll open it up for Q&A. So, let's start with the broader context. One of our advantages at Match Group is the amount of time we spend listening to our consumers. We are always on in conversations in so many different ways with Gen Z. Our insights do not come from a single survey. They come through a vast array of different methodologies—focus groups, traditional survey research techniques, ethnographies, in-person observation, intercepts. We meet them where they're at. We go where it's often very difficult to talk to them—college campuses, third spaces, coffee shops. Social listening plays a massive role. So we're trying to be everywhere and take advantage of the breadth of insights and the multiple different ways people prefer to communicate, gathering insights to paint a more holistic understanding of Gen Z attitudes and behaviors. We're studying not just what people do, but how they feel about their own identity, ways of connection, and journey of self-exploration. We have a community-based research panel called Z Labs, which gives us immediate access to talking to various Gen Z cohorts across our brands. Our research is also not limited to the US—we have researchers across several continents and are regularly doing research in over a dozen countries at any given time. All these different ways of collecting insights gives us a way to separate the short-term noise from deeper, more foundational behavioral shifts. So, who is Gen Z? First and foremost, Gen Z is not a monolith. Within Gen Z, there is a lot of variation. From our research, we encompass a wide range of different identities—sexual identity and expression, race or ethnic identity, urbanicity, religiosity. The intent is not to reduce their lived experience. However, it's important to acknowledge shared truths which shape people's experiences across any generational cohort. We define Gen Z as between 16 and 29 years old. One thing that fundamentally identifies them is that they are digital by default. They have grown up consuming different forms of internet media, whether through social media or community groups. This was specifically shaped through the pandemic. These formative years created limited face-to-face interaction, along with economic instability, high political polarization, and rapid social change—all of which has huge implications on the way they see the world, their psychological outlook, and their preferences for socialization. Gen Z are also incredibly emotionally literate. We hear this all the time—therapy language, understanding their boundaries, exploring their identity, and what their priorities are. This is fundamental for the ways they think about connecting and how they approach the world. We also see this specifically amongst Gen Z women. They find that going to therapy is really important for finding a partner, and this language of establishing boundaries and diagnostic terms are really fluent in their lexicon. It speaks to how readiness and emotional and psychological safety is so important when thinking about building new connections. There's also a phenomenon we refer to as milestone drift. Key milestones like getting your driver's license or moving out of your parents' house are still very important to Gen Z, but they want to achieve these milestones on their own terms, perhaps in a different way, perhaps not linear, on a different timeline. They're also craving real-life connection. Perhaps despite or because of the pandemic, they're growing up online and they hold a lot of nostalgia for a time they never really knew existed. They place a high premium on in-person connections and recognize the importance of face-to-face interaction to complement the digital experiences they also value.
Is that—I was going to interrupt. Is that because they're using their phones and their computers all day at work, and so then they want to put that down to connect in person? Or is it because they know that digital layer is sort of bad for them on some level, and so this is like eat your vegetables, and they know they need to? Where does that come from?
Yeah, all of the above. It's functional. It's like, I want to put my phone down. I need to take a break. I want to prioritize, preserve my time and manage my emotions and see that there is so much value to getting to meet other people. There's also—yeah, you can feel free to continue with that.
I mean, and a great example is thinking of when COVID and lockdown and the pandemic hit them in their formative years. For younger Gen Z, that's middle school, lower classmen, high school. And then for older Gen Z, it's older high school, lower classmen, college. And when that is taken away from you in a really formative time, it becomes ever more present and important as you age, because you recognize, oh, this does feel different. You crave it. You feel different after the fact. So, they seek it out ever more presently.
Perfect. Yeah. So, as I mentioned earlier, Gen Z has grown up as truly the first digitally native generation. Other generations, of course, have leveraged technology in many different ways—we had match.com. But what is different is that this has fully been native to them. One of the reasons they do want to put their phone down is because they've never had that counterfactual, and they're wondering what would this experience be like if I didn't leverage technology as the first starting point. The internet doesn't just influence how they communicate, but it fully transforms and shapes the lens in which they view the world and decide to communicate, whether through symbols like emojis or memes. This is a core and fundamental part of how they communicate. The digital world is kind of defined in three ways and influences them. One is uncertainty is the norm. During this era of the pandemic, there was a lot of financial pressure, perceptions around macroeconomic uncertainty and the implications on their personal lives, political instability. So for them, uncertainty is the norm. Many Gen Z'ers tell us consistently that they don't know what the future is going to look like. Some of this is part of life stage—they're placing more value on the present—but specifically for Gen Z, because they have been so inundated with information about uncertainty, they're not really sure who to trust besides themselves, and that's why they place a higher value on their own readiness before making the next steps and being cautious around decisions.
Just on the point of communicating through memes—for those that work on Wall Street watching this, maybe it's not normal in a presentation to see a meme. I remember only a couple years ago the first time I was in a business meeting and there was a slide back and there was a meme in it. And I remember thinking, that's so unprofessional. Like, that's so weird to see some GIF in a presentation. And now it's like constant, right? Every meeting I'm in, every slide basically is a meme. And I know that hasn't made its way to certain circles in the general business community, including probably some people watching this. But that's just the way they communicate. And even in the workplace.
Yeah, so much can be said with a simple GIF or meme, right?
Okay, another influence is that information for Gen Z is everywhere and it encompasses everything. Social media has really enabled Gen Z to fully absorb and also create a wide range of information, opinions, takes on the world's biggest problems to things like how you expect your boyfriend to show up or who pays for the first date. This also at times can create a sort of emotional whiplash—one second you're looking at a quick reel that gives you anger, another one that gives you joy. Another element is the feeling of being under surveillance and hyper scrutiny. Whether it's online—I feel hesitant to share my opinion, I'm really cautious about what photo I'm going to share of myself so I'm going to focus on curating—or being in a classroom and saying, yes, I'm around a lot of people, but I'm worried that someone might film me giving the wrong answer to the professor. Or I do want to text this person I want to be friends with, but what if they screenshot it and it might damage my reputation.
Like, cancel culture. It's a big problem in academia.
Both students not expressing their opinion in the classroom because they're afraid of being canceled.
Totally. Yeah, this is a big fear. And of course it has implications on self-presentation and curation both of yourself and the information that you're receiving.
And another misconception that we regularly hear is that Gen Z are not open to romance, they're kind of done with dating or it's not a priority. We very much disagree. Unequivocally, we hear time and time again in the research that Gen Z daters absolutely do believe in human connection, but they're just defining how and when they want to get there on their own terms. We conducted a study with the Kinsey Institute at the end of last year, and one of the key findings was that four in five Gen Z singles believe that they will find true love. This is amazing. This is a significant majority. And what was really telling is that it was actually statistically significantly higher than total 18+ singles. So, not only do they want it, they might want it more than the total single population. They overwhelmingly still want to find love, and they're comfortable using technology as part of this process. So, if there's anything to take away, it's that the desire for human connection absolutely remains durable, but what's evolving are their expectations for how they want to connect, when it should happen, and we're trying to evolve our tools to make sure we can support them in the ways that make sense for them.
Love hasn't been lost. Very much alive.
