People are turning their backs on love, says new Guardian research

One in five UK adults says they are single and have stopped dating, as the modern dating landscape shifts, according to a new report.

Shift Happens 2024 reveals that almost two-thirds (60%) of those who have hit the pause button on love are women.

The research forms part of Guardian Advertising’s annual lifestyle trends report showing six shifts in how the nation is living.

Celibacy is in chaos

People are making romantic connections in new ways, with some opting out completely as a reaction to the chaos of the modern dating landscape; a shift Guardian Advertising have dubbed “chaos celibacy”.

One research panellist said: “I’m quite happy now to be my own love of my life. Make myself happy. Take myself out.”

Challenging traditional norms, the survey revealed a rise in two seemingly opposing relationship choices – celibacy and polyamory. Big business is also taking sexual freeness seriously. High street retailers like Holland & Barrett or Boots stock vibrators as well as multivitamins; Feeld - the app for alternative dating - doubled its turnover in a year.

But romantics keep coming back for more

With an audience of 13 million ‘romantics’, the Guardian’s sex, dating and relationship journalism had 44 million page views in the last year alone, covering trends like going boysober, living apart together, ethical non-monogamy and hypergamy.

These topics consistently rank among the Guardian’s top 10 most-read articles. Despite the complexities of modern relationships, the desire for connection and the dream of finding ‘the one’ remains strong.

Shift Happens also reveals that 60% of the Guardian’s audience for this journalism are men – challenging the idea of dating and relationships as a ‘women’s space’.

Five further lifestyle shifts unveiled in the research include: how we’re reclaiming our brains with lo-fi health hacks; how we’re all foodies; the dawn of memespeed pop culture; a reframing of holiday choices from destinations to goals; and what amateur detectives tell us about trust in the media.

Richard Vine, executive editor, UK Advertising, Guardian Media Group, said:

“Shift Happens does what the Guardian does best - join the dots and make sense of the bigger shifts underneath the micro trends moving at memespeed.”

Imogen Fox, chief advertising officer, Guardian Media Group, said:

“This research reveals a UK determined to find joy when the big picture feels overwhelming: an optimistic story that we hope will be inspiring to our advertisers.”

Shift Happens is powered by a diverse and nationally representative survey of 1,500 adults across the UK with research partner QuMind, alongside intimate focus groups; rich first party audience insights drawn from Guardian journalism; and Guardian Voices, a proprietary research panel of 6,000 readers.

To find out more, download a copy of the Shift Happens 2024 report here .

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For more information please contact media.enquiries@theguardian.com .

Notes to editors

Guardian Shift Happens research methodology

Shift Happens 2024 was designed to find out the major shifts in how people are living their lives and finding joy and connection among 2024’s world chaos. The research methodology employed a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches, outlined as follows:

1. Nationwide survey: A nationwide survey study among a diverse and nationally representative sample of 1,500 adults across the UK. This included a happiness index that ranked happiness levels in comparison with the year before.

2. Focus groups: A diverse mix of 23 individuals took part in a series of online group chats to get a deeper understanding of what was making them happy, and how they were spending their time. This was supplemented by a further series of online interviews with five individuals, delving deeper into some of the themes. There were also a number of follow-up polls and discussions on key topics using Guardian Voices, a proprietary research panel of 6,000 Guardian readers.

3. Audience insights: Using in-house analytics we looked at how Guardian readers engage with our journalism through analysing real time online browsing behaviour including attention time and how deeply an article is read.

About Guardian News & Media

Guardian News & Media (GNM) publishes theguardian.com , one of the world’s leading English-language news websites. Traffic from outside of the UK now represents about two-thirds of the Guardian’s total digital audience. In the UK, GNM publishes the Guardian newspaper – first published in 1821 – six days a week, and the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper, the Observer.