Jackie Jantos Hinge CEO: Gen Z struggle to connect

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“Gen Z are spending less hours in person with each other per year than their same age group two decades ago… They experienced the pandemic during those years of the 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, they're struggling to find ways to find it and struggling to have the confidence to put themselves out there.”Sean Farrington speaks to Jackie Jantos, CEO of popular mobile dating app Hinge, about finding romance in today’s rapidly-changing digital world.Launched back in 2013, US-based Hinge has 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 ten years before.Hinge encouragingly bills itself as the ‘app to be deleted’, and unlike many competitor apps, 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, owned by the American dating giant Match Group, has a difficult balancing act to maintain. It has to innovate to attract new users and make a profit, while also ensuring their users find romance and so don’t have to keep using the app.Thank you to the Big Boss Interview team for their help in making this programme. The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC, including episodes with music icon Chaka Khan, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, and entrepreneur Emma Grede. You can listen on the BBC World Service on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 0800 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out three times a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts. Presenter: Sean Farrington Producers: Jeevan Nerwan and Ben Cooper Editor: Damon RoseGet in touch with