Gen Z can’t afford to date—but Grindr CEO says the real problem is how apps have monetized romance

But Grindr CEO George Arison isn’t buying it. “We have no challenge with young people on the app, like it’s in no way a concern,” Arison told Fortune in an exclusive interview.

“This whole Gen Z doesn’t want to be online is not an issue among gay people. I actually don’t think it’s an issue among straight people either. What’s an issue is the way the apps have developed.”

In the last decade, he explains how dating apps have gone from being free (or practically free) to charging their users for basic services, like sending unlimited messages.

“The other products have become so impossible to use if you want to use them as a free product, because they’re just over monetized,” he says. 

“Now, if you don’t pay, and you’re male, the apps are basically not usable. And even as a woman, yes, you can do more things in the app without paying, but you’re still very limited,” he adds. “Grindr never did that… And so we don’t have a problem with Gen Z or late-stage millennials, because the free product is extremely robust. That’s the fundamental difference.” 

It’s not that young people don’t want to spend money on dating. It’s just why would they spend money on apps, when they can slide into the DM’s of a romantic interest on Instagram (or even LinkedIn) for free?

“People don’t want to spend money when they don’t have to, right? When you’re younger and you don’t have money, obviously it’s even more so,” Arison adds. “It’s not about, hey, I don’t see value in it. I don’t need it because I have alternative ways to get the same outcome.”

Gen Z are dating up

There’s no shortage of videos on TikTok with advice on “dating up”. Plenty of Fish even declared that Gen Zers are “throning,” essentially only people who are better than you. Research echoes that young people are dating people “25% more desirable” than they are—and Grindr CEO says it’s nothing new, at least in the LGBTQ+ community. 

“In the gay world, it’s completely normal,” he tells Fortune, adding that a ten-year-plus age gap is also much more common.

Arison, says that while a 25-year-old woman walking down the street arm in arm with a 35-year-old man may raise eyebrows, in his world, it’s been the status quo “always—not just like in the last 30 years, but like in the last two thousand.” 

“It happens all time, we’ve all had those experiences,” he adds. “It’s driven by everyone before being in the closet. We kind of had to stick together, because we all knew the rules of the game. And so we had to help each other because no one was helping us otherwise.”

Before becoming Grindr’s CEO or even founding Taxi Magic (which is sold for an undisclosed amount and is now called Curb), Arison says he was a shy graduate from the Soviet Union, trying to figure out his place in the U.S. as a gay man—he found guidance and support in older gay men.

“Grindr did not exist when I was young,” the now 47-year-old recalls. “I met recently, the former CEO of a product called Manhunt, (a socialising app for gay, bi, trans, and queer men) and I told him directly, when I finished college and I got to DC at 22, Manhunt was the primary way in which I figured out what it was like to be gay.”

“Mannhant was a place where I could meet other gay men, and, they were most likely older than me, and I figured out myself and what it was like to have gay life. And I developed gay friends all through that,” he adds. 

Back then, the app was a telephone service and then by 2001, it was a website. For context, Grindr launched in 2009. But even in a world of swipes and instant matches, Arison says that mentorship dynamic remains.

“For me, that was way easier than just showing up at a bar and having a conversation with somebody. So I was very much raised by older gay men to figure out what it was like to be gay, because there was no playbook. So I think it’s a bit like it’s always been true, and that’s what happened for me.”