Jackie Jantos, Hinge CEO: Gen Z struggle to connect

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1:12We need this is fire. We need healing. We need trust. These companies don't really, they don't care what governments do. This is a war. The first thing that we want is the war to end. For this interview, I met Jackie Jantos on her visit to London. She's chief executive of the mobile dating app Hinge. Launched back in 2013, the US-based Hinge had steadily grown to become one of the world's biggest mobile dating apps. As of 2025, there were 30 million users on the platform looking for romance all over the world, up from half a million just 10 years before. Hinge bills itself as the app to be deleted.

1:50It says its focus is on creating real interactions, for example, encouraging users to like photos or prompts rather than quickly swiping left or right. In a crowded industry worth billions of dollars, the app, which is owned by the American dating giant Match Group, which, by the way, also owns Tinder, has had a difficult balancing act to maintain. It has to innovate to attract new users and make a profit while also aiming for users to find romance and therefore not having to use the app at the end of the day. We focus very much on the free experience. We call that sacred. You know, the reality is we have more than 15 million users and to be an effective dating app, you need to have a lot of people on it.

2:31One of the insights we hear all the time from people who met their partner online, this applies to my personal story, is I would have never met this person if I didn't have this piece of technology. And wow, I ended up with someone that I couldn't have even imagined would be the right person for me.

2:50Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Jackie Jantos. We are building Hinge for a Gen Z audience. This audience is experiencing so much transformation right now. They're also living in a world where unemployment for them is at its high. Their lives are being transformed through AI and new technologies. And this is a group that has been spending less and less time in person with others. And that's fundamentally changing how they interact with other people and their comfort level of showing up in search of a relationship, which we know is also something that they deeply desire.

3:29So there is a lot going on and sort of a lot to talk about. Which one of those things do you think is having the biggest impact on how Hinge works, how the dating app scene works right now? I would say, you know, we know that Gen Z are spending 1 ,000 less hours in person with each other per year than their same age group two decades ago. So if you just break that down to the simplicity of two plus hours per day, spent not in the company of another human, but most likely sort of going deep in some sort of experience engaged in your phone, this sort of prevents people from having the experience of being around others.

4:17And that is quite a lonely experience. And so we are seeing that this generation disproportionately is feeling lonely and isolated. And in the UK, as one example, we know that almost half of Gen Z individuals in the UK are feeling lonely often or always. That is the audience who also want relationships, who are coming into Hinge looking for them. They do. We do know that they are also seeking love. But, you know, they experienced the pandemic during those years of late teens, early 20s, those years when you're sort of experimenting with how you show up in person with another person, how you flirt, how you think about intimacy, you know, so they absolutely want love.

5:04They're struggling to find ways to find it and struggling to have the confidence to put themselves out there. So it's your focus. Does that mean are older generations moving away from dating up? No, it doesn't. It is a deeply human, sort of like culturally led thing. And so, for example, if you look at Gen Z as a demographic, this demographic in many markets is increasingly LGBTQI plus representative year over year, decade over decade. So when we look at actually the umbrella of LGBTQ individuals, the fastest growth is coming with the bisexual young women. These aren't necessarily women who have had a sexual experience, but this is how they're identifying.

5:51So for us, if you're building an app, again, going back to focusing on user outcomes and going back to building product features that are delivering against the needs of next generation audiences, those are the type of macro cultural insights that you need to pay attention to. And this is what keeps our product innovating. We have a number of new features on their way, like signals. This is a feature that helps you understand which daters on the app are putting in what we believe to be highly intentional, thoughtful, effortful behaviors. And so you can sort of get a sense for a person who you might be interacting with on the app, are they putting in the work.

6:35You know, one of the things we hear from women in Gen Z and sort of across cohorts is that there's this feeling that there's this disproportionate emotional labour put into the dating app experience and many experiences in life, if I'm honest. And so what they're looking for are signals that other people are putting in an equal amount of effort. How do you know that what looks like, what might look like a lot of extra effort isn't artificial intelligence being used to do all of that? We have a number of embedded tools and features that users use to express themselves through their profiles. So profiles on Hinge, you know, we lose about 20 % of folks who come onto the app through the onboarding experience, because the onboarding experience asks quite a lot from you, especially in this category.

7:26And we're fine with losing people on that experience, because it's intended to be a community of people looking for an intentional relationship. So prompts, as an example, which Hinge invented, is a sort of an icebreaker question that we ask a number to be filled out. So an example of an AI tool on Hinge is prompt feedback. This is a tool that you can use should you want to. It will review your prompt and it will help you understand the quality of your prompt. And, you know, spoiler alert, a high quality prompt is one that has quite a bit of detail and is long because ultimately on Hinge, you're building out a rich profile where we're looking for engagement from another person right off the bat of profile review.

8:10So it's modular. No, because actually, for example, if I'm filling out a prompt and it says, I love watching movies, that's not a particularly strong prompt because it gives no context really to another person looking at my profile. It gives no way in. So the prompt would say, The prompt would say, it would say, tell me more. What kind of movies do you like? And I would say, oh, my favorite movie is Amelie. What do you love about Amelie? I love that it's this gorgeous love story between these two people. And I love watching movies on every Saturday I go and see a matinee. Now, when that is in the profile, now the prompt feedback will tell me that's a great prompt.

8:52And it's a great prompt because it's specific. It's in my words. and what prompt feedback as an AI tool has done has helped extract from me a little bit more detail. So when someone sees my profile, they might say, oh, I also love French films. Like, have you seen this one or this one? You know, it's a way in that gives more context. That's how we use AI. So you let the person who's on the other side of the conversation know if the person they're chatting to is using AI tools or not. It doesn't quite work that way because a prompt extracted borrowing a tool like getting feedback on your prompts so you explain more.

9:30Because you're saying you opt into using it if you want to use it. I just wonder whether the person on the other end should be made aware that the person they're talking to is getting a bit of help with this. No, because the person is using their own words to describe who they are, right? This is coming out of my voice. This is about me. This is what I like to do. And now I'm going to let you know that I also like to do it on the weekends. And like these are not this is not AI writing or performing as you. This is AI giving you tips on encouraging you to tell more about yourself. I mean, it's just fascinating the amount of aspects artificial intelligence will be having on the world of online communications, which like dating is the center of that.

10:22I talked a little bit earlier about the use of AI in the recommender and some of these tools that help you tell more about yourself. The third way we use AI is really our trust and safety tooling. And AI is a huge unlock. Explain that a little bit more, just how you do that. Well, one example is, you know, large language models. When you think about if you're sending someone a message and our tooling identifies that you may be using a word that could be harmful or could be offensive to someone. You may not even know. A lot of people who send messages, it's a cultural context. It might not even be intended to be that way.

11:00We have a tool called, you know, are you sure? And that will pop up and say, are you sure you want to send this message? And a number of people look at that message, look at the message they just wrote and think, oh, okay, maybe it's this word. Maybe I should rephrase that and then change and send their message. On the flip side, AI helps us understand messages that someone's receiving. And if something could be harmful, could pop up to the recipient and say, did this bother you? And then you could give that feedback to us. So the feedback we receive in an instance like that, grounded by AI, is helping us better understands how we can do more interventions in that way to make sure that people are respectful towards each other in moments where actually they might not be trying to be disrespectful by design.

11:45It might just be sort of a cultural nuance. But what if that is who they are? What if that is the authentic version of them? Whatever the, you know, the intentions, that may be their authentic person. And shouldn't the person on the other side of that conversation be allowed to be exposed to that to make a decision about who they might be meeting? You know, I think when people express themselves, we offer tools with the hopefulness that individuals are showing up in this highly intentioned app. They've gone through quite a long onboarding. They've gone through the journey of engaging with someone.

12:26And ultimately, again, the goal is to get off the app and get into a great date. You know, people have agency to sort of decide whether this is a conversation they want to continue with, whether it's a conversation they don't. You're listening to the interview from the BBC World Service.

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14:12That's knix.com, code FLOW15. That's knix.com. It's an interesting one, this, because the dating industry has clearly grown so much over recent decades. but people have big questions don't they about what kind of services they should be providing and how they should be looking for love a particularly interesting part of the conversation with the chief executive of hinge was to what extent it is willing to use artificial intelligence to help people message each other do you want hints as to what phrases to use next do you want the artificial intelligence to be picking up on phrases you perhaps shouldn't be using and stopping you use them.

14:55We sort of explored how far Hinge would be willing to go and how that ties in with their desires to get people to meet up and find romance. Okay, let's return to my conversation with Jackie Jantos. When you've talked about, you know, Hinge is focused on that Gen Z generation, are you having to prepare yourself somehow for newer users who will be, you know, growing up and and entering an age where they'll be getting dating apps? The preparation we are doing is the continuation of the path that we've been on, which is how do you help humans express who they are, learn what their relationship, dating needs might be, meet up in person with other humans.

15:40The meeting up in person with other humans, this is something that is not a need that is going away. And actually what's quite interesting is if you start to think about other generations. I have two boys. They're 9 and 11. They're growing up with a mother who's going to wait a long time before I give them social media. And so I do think this importance of meeting in person and all of these tools you're beginning to see that are encouraging people to get off their phones and get back out into the world, this is the path that we're on. This is a journey that sort of puts wind at the back of a dating app like Hinge because this is the philosophy we believe in as well.

16:19Meeting in person, spending time in person, relationships and love and deep connection in person. This is the essence of life. And that will never change. If you look back at some of the famous examples of all time, sort of, you know, Steve Jobs being asked if his kids have iPads and him saying like, absolutely not. You know, there's a reason that these technology founders that are creating a lot of this technology are not giving it to their children. They don't shout about that straight away, though, do they? In the big advertising campaign. I think many other technology products are built for engagement on the app.

16:55They are built because their ultimate business model is built around advertising revenue. And so if you're built around advertising revenue, the outcome you're looking for for the humans is engagement on the app and lots of eyeballs. If your model is built on the outcome producing user growth, producing revenue growth, and less than 15 % of your users are actually paying, then your outcome focused is getting them off the app. You're designed to be deleted slogan that you have for the business. How does something like that tally when you are sort of encouraging people to pay more, to be able to see more of the likes of their profile, to be able to get higher up the feeds of others who are looking as well, where you need that income from people and you want people to be paying more?

17:48That's not actually the experience on Hinge. You know, I think of designed to be deleted as a philosophy. It's about how you bring people on this journey to move from a match to a rich conversation, move from a rich conversation to the exchange of information, move from the exchange of information to a date in person. And then we're going to ask you how that went. So actually the journey in and of itself is oriented towards that outcome. and the growth, again, that we are seeing around the world, the sort of only dating app of our scale, that is really an outcome of the work that we're doing to get people onto great dates.

18:29And, you know, we see it in our own data. When people find partners, they send us an enormous amount of outreach, whether it's wedding invitations. You know, we know, for example, in the U.S., One of every 10 engagements, a recent data point is because of a relationship that started on Hinge. That's huge. You know, this category still continues to be the way that people meet partners. You can have a great date and it can be a one-off, can't it? Every date is still an experience where we've encouraged someone to get off the app and courageously walk into an experience where they're meeting someone in person.

19:07This is building the skill and building the resilience and encouraging people to come out and try. That is the purpose of the app. And that's really what we're trying to encourage people to do. And we do that in a number of other ways. For example, we have an entire social impact program that's just about funding young groups that are basically hobby and social clubs to build in-person experience. It has nothing to do with dating. It's just it's important for us to continue to grow our business for individuals to actually want to go out on a date and meet someone. So we're going to invest. People, you know, the generation actually starting to take control themselves of going out the way people would have done before dating apps and meet at clubs.

19:55We're seeing a growth, aren't we, in particularly around the world of health. But it could be book clubs. It could be various societies like that where people are using those more to meet people. And they're being set up almost with that sort of in the back of their mind. Is that one of your biggest competitors now? I don't see that as a competitor at all. I look at the rise of these social and hobby groups, but also the macro forces in truth are that it is very unaffordable for a Gen Z audience to leave the house and spend money out in other places. There is a real decline in what is known as third spaces in many urban centres, whether those used to be community centres or even institutions like church.

20:41You know, there are far fewer of those spaces where people can go to and enjoy time for free. Is that an issue for you? Because obviously anybody who agrees on a date on your app often will, you know, the automatic thing will be to go out and spend money together. Have you seen that become more of an issue with the cost of living? You know, one of the features that we recently released is called date ideas. And it's basically a feature you can choose to put as a module. You know, hinge profiles are modules. So you can put this module on your profile and it allows you to choose. It allows someone viewing your profile to choose from two toggles that you've set.

21:20One is a time frame and one is a date idea. And so it's like, I'd like to go out within the next week. And the date idea I have is, and it's, you know, I might have put on my profile, let's go for a walk. Let's meet at Central Park. I live in New York. Let's go get a coffee. And they're putting options out there that are, some are just sort of like meeting up in a park during the day. We are seeing a rise in daytime dates. We are definitely seeing a decline in bar meetups. And there's just this really wonderful thing happening where we leave that toggle open-ended so me as the dater can choose a couple of things.

21:58So if affordability is a real issue for me, I can choose a multitude of ways to offer date ideas in that list that don't really cost sort of anything. And how does that translate into what people are willing to pay for Hinge? Because there is a free service, as you've described. And then was it 15 % of your customers? Less than 15%. For us, we focus very much on the free experience. We call that sacred. The reality is we have more than 15 million users. And to be an effective dating app, you need to have a lot of people on it. This is true. One of the insights we hear all the time from people who met their partner online, this applies to my personal story, is I would have never met this person if I didn't have this piece of technology.

22:44And wow, I ended up with someone that I couldn't have even imagined would be the right person for me. So you need people and you need a variety of people, you know, and we also encourage people instead of sort of closing in on filters to who you think is the perfect person for you, coming in with an open mind. You know, an individual who lives one more kilometer away from where you live might unlock a huge swath of people you otherwise might not have seen. So I think these are all things that we're encouraging young people. And, you know, we're seeing the growth. So we're doing something right.

23:21And we're just continuously learning and continuously iterating on the product to try to meet people's needs and learn real time what can really support them. Do you envisage that the world of dating apps, when the latest advances in technology maybe settle down a little bit, that there'll be fewer people on them than we've seen in the heyday and the excitement and the growth of the industry? I don't see how that's possible. You know, as apps get better at helping people and supporting people's needs, people's needs are not changing. Their time spent on their phone, engaged in who knows what, that's not changing.

23:58The feelings of isolation and loneliness and fear in a world that is rapidly transforming, that's not changing. Does it need to change? The desire for people to continue to meet people. Well, listen, I can't change these seismic forces alone, be it the economy, be it how we're using technology, being how sort of big organizations are encouraging different types of experiences and hinges. But I can impact this one space. You know, I can keep this team, this organization of deep empaths, you know, on this track of organizing around supporting young people and their search for love. You know, Hinge as an organization where, you know, we're a small group, but we're a mighty group.

24:43And we're paying really close attention to what young folks need. And we're trying to orient a product in service of them. And that brings sort of like real joy to us as an organization to see when people do meet partners on Hinge. And again, when they meet partners on Hinge, they tell us that too. So that's a really rewarding part of the job.

25:05Thank you for listening to The Interview. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can find many more episodes of The Interview wherever you get your BBC podcasts, including ones with music icon Shaka Khan and the Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark. Until the next time, bye for now.

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