Gen Z didn’t kill romance.
We did.
And we billed them for the funeral.

The Atlantic piece wonders why teens are ghosting relationships like they’re spam calls. Fewer first loves, fewer steady partners, a nationwide epidemic of “meh” in the department of desire. Is it apathy? Is it self-sufficiency? Is it TikTok? Is it... evolution?

No. It’s fear. It’s ledger terror. It’s emotional austerity.

These kids aren’t cold—they’re cautious. They’ve grown up watching closeness turn radioactive. Parents on the edge. Friends imploding over group chat drama. Dates turning to headlines. They’ve seen what happens when feelings aren’t mutual, when vulnerability isn’t mirrored, when “connection” means watching read receipts like they’re EKGs.

So now they’re opting out of the whole damn market.

They still want love.
They just don’t want to go bankrupt for it.

Welcome to the Situationship Era—where you can flirt, hook up, spiral into infatuation... but God forbid you label it. Because once you name it, you owe something. You admit you're exposed. You give the other person the power to walk, and leave a hole in your rhythm. You risk being the one who cared more—which in modern dating, is the social equivalent of slipping on a banana peel in front of your crush and their group chat.

And what do we offer as elders? Platitudes. Plato. A story about Zeus cutting people in half. Meanwhile, these kids are slicing their own hearts into pieces just to stay legible in a world that rewards indifference and punishes sincerity.

Here’s the real shift:
Romance used to be a rite of passage.
Now it’s an unpaid internship—with worse boundaries.

You’re expected to show up, give your best, learn on the job—and walk away with nothing official to put on your résumé. No commitment. No clarity. Just vibes, vanishing texts, and a feedback loop of second-guessing.

No wonder teens are out. They're not unfeeling—they're unprotected.
They haven’t been given the tools to navigate co-do safely.

We’ve starved them of the basic architecture:

• How to distinguish flirtation from intent.
• How to ask for clarity without being branded needy.
• How to exit gracefully.
• How to recover when you care and they don’t.

Instead, we gave them sitcom tropes, trauma memes, and dating apps optimized for swipe speed, not soul.

We forgot to teach them how to dance with someone else’s inner world—without losing the beat of their own.

So now they’re defaulting to self-containment. Independence is safer than interdependence. And who can blame them?

But safety isn’t the same as nourishment.
And solitude is not the same as sovereignty.

“Your heart’s not broken. It’s on airplane mode.”
“You didn’t miss love. You dodged a system with no user manual.”

That’s what I’d tell the 26-year-old TikToker who’s never been in a relationship and wonders if they’re defective.

You’re not.
You’re current-gen human, running a legacy OS for connection in a glitching society. And you deserve better compatibility tools.

Romance isn’t dead. It’s just waiting for an update.
One where intimacy doesn’t mean losing your signal.
And catching feelings isn’t treated like catching fire.

Go ahead. Text them back.
You’re allowed to want more than vibes.