You paid for Tinder Gold. You upgraded to Hinge Preferred. You bought Bumble Coins. You spent real money every month trying ...

Fueled by the loneliness epidemic and advanced large language models, the multi-billion-dollar AI girlfriend industry ...

If you’ve been feeling lonely over the past few years, you’re not alone. According to a 2023 report from the U.S. surgeon general, about half of U.S. adults reported feeling lonely, even before the ...

A startup called Friending has launched a social platform built around a premise that sounds almost quaint in 2026: helping people make friends by meeting in person. The app, based in Raleigh, North ...

Editor's note: This segment was rebroadcast on Aug. 22, 2025. Click here for that audio. The United States is in an “epidemic of loneliness,” according to the surgeon general. The internet and social ...

On a summer evening in San Francisco, JT Mason went to dinner with five complete strangers, confident he would have a good time thanks to careful guest selection by a new type of app for meeting ...

San Francisco — A sticker on a wall in Lisbon caught Katya Gratcheva’s attention last fall: “No dating or networking. Just breakfast.” It led the married 52-year-old, tired of the transactional ...

We spoke with investors about the future of social media. Here are five takeaways on AI, loneliness, and dating.

Research shows that chronic social isolation can be as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and perhaps no group is more at risk than the elderly. In response to this health crisis, Kennesaw State ...