Social Media Ruined Romance

and Gen Z made it worse

There was a time, yes, a time before dating apps, algorithmic thirst traps, and “wyd?” texts that romance felt like yearning. A word we don’t use enough. A word that used to fill entire notebooks and unsent letters. A word that lived in the silent spaces between two people who hadn’t yet touched hands, but had memorized every line of each other’s faces.

Romance used to be waiting.

Waiting for their letter. Waiting outside the library hoping they'd pass by. Waiting to see them from across the room. Waiting for the school bell to ring. Waiting for MSN to show them as “online.”

It was slow. It was terrifying. It was vulnerable. It was intimate. Love wasn’t about sharing your playlist it was about wondering if they liked the same sad, obscure indie song you played 78 times in a week just because they looked at you once in class.

We wrote poems. We cried to love songs on cassettes. We knew what their handwriting looked like. We remembered the exact date they wore that mustard sweater and smiled at you. There was no archive, no save button. You lived in the moment or you missed it. That was the ache of it. The exquisite agony of maybe. Of almost.

When the internet was introduced, something changed. Somewhere along the way, love became a performance. You're not dating. You're curating. You're branding. You're editing the story of your relationship for consumption. “Soft launch” this. “Hard launch” that. “Archive because we broke up, but I’m still leaving the highlight so people know I was once loved.”

You’re tracking their likes like a deranged FBI agent. You’re watching who commented. You’re decoding why they followed their ex’s dog. You’re fighting over emojis.

We're no longer feeling things. We're posting feelings. We're performing grief. We're monetizing desire. We're trying to win breakups. Is it even a real heartbreak if you didn’t post a moody photo?

I miss the days when breakups weren’t aesthetic. When you cried into your pillow, not into your front camera. When you actually healed, instead of creating a 30-second carousel called “my healing journey” while “August” plays in the background, and your nails look suspiciously fresh.

Now we don’t even know how to say goodbye anymore. We invented an entirely new language for avoiding intimacy. We don’t even break up anymore. We just slowly vanish. Like emotionally unavailable magicians.

Ghosting: the adult version of hiding under the blanket so the monster (aka accountability) can’t see you.

Breadcrumbing: giving someone just enough attention so they don’t move on, but not enough to feel loved.

Orbiting: watching their stories just to haunt them.

Soft-blocking: when you're emotionally constipated and cowardly but still want control.

You know what people used to do before this mess? They talked. They broke up. They let you hear it. They let you cry. They let it end. They gave you closure, not confusion with a blue tick and the sudden disappearance of “typing…”

And don’t even get me started on dating apps. They were supposed to bring us together. They turned love into window shopping. Into a game. Into something that looks more like doomscrolling than desire. You’re swiping through hundreds of people, rejecting them for things as stupid as a weird bio or the fact that they posted a gym mirror selfie in 2017.

You’re “talking” to seven people at once and genuinely connecting with none of them. You’re saying “haha, you’re so cute” to someone while forgetting what the last person you flirted with even looked like. You say “I love you” on day four and ghost them on day five because they double-texted. You’ve got trust issues, but also ten backup options just in case this one breathes wrong.

We don’t want people, we want attention. We want to be wanted. And when we’re not, we download the app again and restart the cycle like it’s a slot machine and maybe, just maybe, we’ll hit the jackpot this time.

But I miss the ache. I miss the old-school kind, the kind where someone passed you a note that said “hi” and it lived in your pocket for a year. The kind where you had to call their landline and talk to their mom first. The kind where missing someone wasn’t a dramatic song lyric on a story, it was just sitting by the window, hoping they were missing you too. I miss the kind of love that was built slowly. That grew in glances. That was awkward and uncertain and terrifying, but so, so real. The kind of love that happened in your real life, not your camera roll.

Because real love shouldn’t feel like content. It should feel like presence. Real love is the way someone looks at you across a train station. The way someone holds their cup. The way they smile mid-sentence when they talk about something that mattered to them once. Real love is not how well someone poses with you. It’s how they stay when you’re unbearable. It’s how they remember the little things that actually matter, the quiet habits that make you, you. It’s how they sit next to you in silence without it feeling empty. It’s how they show up again and again and again, not to be seen by others, but just to be with you.

And maybe that’s where we went wrong. Maybe love wasn’t meant to be seen. Maybe it was always meant to be sacred. Maybe we ruined it when we tried to turn it into something explainable, presentable, Instagrammable. Maybe love was never meant to be aesthetic. Maybe it was always meant to be messy. To be quiet. To be boring and awkward and a little chaotic and entirely our own.

Social media didn’t just ruin romance, it butchered it. It sold it. It filtered it. It made us think that love is a highlight reel, that a relationship isn’t real unless 847 people tap the heart on it. But the truth is, the best love stories don’t live online. They live in everyday glances, in ordinary moments, in little things you don’t post because they’re too precious to explain. And if you still believe in love, the real kind, the painful, beautiful, terrifying, slow kind,

So go ahead and log out for a bit. Send a risky text. Write a long message. Ask someone how their day was and really mean it. Love like the Wi-Fi’s down. Like, there’s no algorithm watching. Like it’s 1998 and you have to show up in person.

I promise somewhere out there, someone’s craving the same realness you are.

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