Hi, everyone. Welcome to our first-ever CEO Connection event. This is a new series where we'll dive into a topic of particular interest. We're excited to have you here on webcast and live stream. On earnings calls, obviously, we spend most of our time focusing on financial performance and operating metrics. This event gives us a chance to go deeper on the consumer insights that inform how we think about the category and our product strategy. We get asked versions of the same question all the time, which is, has Gen Z basically abandoned dating apps? Our answer to that is no, not at all. They still want connection, their needs around what that connection looks like have evolved. Today, we'll help frame an understanding around Gen Z. This is not a product presentation like our SPARKS event, it's not a quarterly earnings update. It's a discussion on the future of human connection and what we're learning from younger generations, how expectations are evolving, and how those insights inform how we build products across the company. Today's discussion may include forward-looking statements. Some of those risks related to that are listed here and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Before we get into the research, I want to introduce today's speakers. I have with me two of the world's foremost experts on Gen Z and on consumer insights. I'm joined by Emily Dods, who leads global brand strategy at Tinder. Before coming to Tinder, Emily spent over a decade in creative advertising, where she helped brands bridge the gap between culture and data. She helped brands like Meta and AT&T connect with impact to their consumers. Also here with me is Max Izenberg. Hello, Max. Welcome. Max leads consumer research across Match Group. He has a PhD in public policy with over a decade of peer-reviewed published research on risk perception, vulnerability, and public safety. These are two of the people closest to how young daters are thinking, behaving, and talking about relationships. They spend all their time on research, interviews, focus groups, doing original consumer work behind these insights. My role today is to just sort of provide a canvas and highlight what their insights are and lead the discussion, and then moderate the Q&A. Max? Great. Thanks, Spencer. Hi, all. As Spencer noted, today is about understanding how Gen Z is thinking about relationships and connection. We'll first start with an overview of how we're listening to Gen Z across Match Group and the ways that we're collecting insights regularly. We'll spend a minute walking through what we're seeing in the data. Emily will walk through the four evolving expectations that we're seeing among Gen Z for how they want to connect. We'll connect then those insights with the product evolution that we're seeing with Tinder and Hinge in particular. Finally, we'll look ahead at a sneak preview of the emerging insights we're seeing amongst older Gen Alpha, and then we'll open it up for Q&A. Great. Let's start with the broader context. Before we fully get started, I want to share with you all how we collect insights that we will be sharing today and across Match Group to inform marketing and product development. One of our advantages at Match Group is the amount of time we spend listening to our consumers. We are always on in conversations in so many different ways with Gen Z. Our insights do not come from a single survey. They come through a vast array of different methodologies. This can include focus groups of various different sizes, traditional survey research techniques, ethnographies, in-person observation, intercepts. We meet them where they are at. We are not just saying, "Who is in L.A.? Come to us for convenience." We go where it is often very difficult to talk to them, in college campuses, in their third spaces where they like to hang out, coffee shops. Social listening plays a massive role. We are trying to be everywhere and really take advantage of the breadth of insights that we are seeing and the multiple different ways in which people prefer to communicate and gathering our insights to paint a more holistic understanding of Gen Z attitudes and behaviors. We are studying not just what people do, but how they feel about their own identity, ways of connection, and journey of self-exploration. And that gives us an always-on window into how young daters are evolving. You see here that we say that we have a community-based research panel that has been going on for several years now, which we call Z Labs, which gives us immediate access to talking to various Gen Z cohorts across all of our brands. Our research is also not limited to the U.S. We have researchers across several continents and are regularly doing research in over a dozen countries at any given time. All these different ways of collecting insights, this gives us a way to separate the short-term noise that we are seeing from deeper, more foundational behavioral shifts. Now, who is Gen Z? The reason why we are all here. First and foremost, Gen Z is not a monolith. Within Gen Z, there is a lot of variation, as you can see, with any generational cohort. From our research, we make sure that we encompass a wide range of different identities, whether it is sexual identity and sexual expression, race or ethnic identity, urbanicity, religiosity, or the role of religion that plays into people's lives. The intent is not to reduce or flatten this experience by any means. However, it is important to acknowledge that there are some shared truths which shaped people's experiences across any particular generational cohort. For all intents and purposes here, we are going to define Gen Z as between 16 and 29 years old. And within this generational cohort, one thing that fundamentally identifies them is that they are digital by default. They have grown up specifically consuming different forms of internet media, whether it is through social media or community groups. This specifically was shaped through the pandemic. These formative years during the global pandemic created limited face-to-face interaction. There was also a lot of economic instability, heightened political polarization, rapid social change, all of which has huge implications on the way they see the world, their psychological outlook, and their preferences for socialization. Gen Z are also incredibly emotionally literate. We hear this all the time with research that therapy language, understanding their boundaries, exploring their identity, and how they show up in terms of preparing for themselves and what their priorities are. This is so fundamental for the ways that they think about connecting and the ways that they walk and approach the world. We also see this, specifically amongst Gen Z women. They find that going to therapy is really important for finding a partner, and that this language of establishing boundaries and even diagnostic terms are really fluent in their lexicon. It really speaks worlds to how readiness and emotional and psychological safety is so important when they're thinking about building new connections. There's also a phenomena which we refer to as milestone drift. Many researchers, external to Match Group, have talked about this phenomenon in different ways, is that there are these key milestones that are oftentimes prized in American society that are so emblematic of freedom and independence. For example, getting your driver's license, moving out of your parents' house. These are still by and large very important to Gen Z, but what we're seeing is that they want to achieve these milestones on their own terms, perhaps in a different way, and perhaps it's not linear, on a different timeline. They're also craving real-life connection. Perhaps despite or because of the pandemic, they're growing up online and they hold a lot of nostalgia for a time or a counterfactual that they never really knew existed. They are placing a high premium on these in-person connections that, whether it's starting a connection offline or just having some role, they do recognize the importance of a face-to-face interaction to complement the digital experiences which they also value and are so integrated into their lives. Sorry to interrupt. Yeah. Is that because they're using their phones and their computers all day at work, they want to put that down to connect in person? Or is it because they know that that digital layer is sort of bad for them on some level, this is like eat your vegetables, and they know they need to? Where does that come from? All of the above. It's functional. It's like, I want to put my phone down. I need to take a break. I want to prioritize, preserve my time and manage my emotions and see that there is so much value to getting to meet other people. There's also, yeah, you can feel free to kick in as well. Yes. No, I mean, a great example is thinking of when COVID-19 and lockdown and the pandemic hit them in their formative years. For younger Gen Z, that's a bit older, middle school, younger, lower classmen high school. For older Gen Z, it's older high school, lower classmen college. When that is taken away from you in a really formative time, it becomes ever more present and important as you age because you recognize, oh, this does feel different. You crave it. You know you feel different after the fact. They seek it out ever more presently. Absolutely. Great segue. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. Again, as mentioned earlier, Gen Z has grown up as truly the first digitally native generation. Other generations, of course, have leveraged technology in many different ways. We had Match.com. What is different is that this has fully been native to them. One of the reasons that they do look to put their phone down is because they've never had this counterfactual, and they're wondering, what would this experience be like if I didn't leverage technology as the first starting point, or if it had a different role? I'm wondering different ways to use technology in the process of making new connections, which is very exciting. The internet doesn't just influence how they communicate, but it fully transforms and shapes the lens in which they view the world and decide to communicate, whether it's through symbols like emojis or memes. This is absolutely a core and fundamental part of how they communicate. The digital world is kind of defined in three ways and influences them. One is, uncertainty is the norm. During this era of the pandemic, which defined them, there was, as mentioned previously, a lot of financial pressure, the perceptions around the macroeconomic certainty or uncertainty that is going on and the implications on their personal lives, political instability. For them, uncertainty is the norm. Many Gen Z are telling us consistently that they don't know what the future is going to look like. Sure, some of this is a part of life stage, that they're placing more value on the present. Specifically for Gen Z, because they have been so inundated with this information about this uncertainty, they're not really sure who to trust besides themselves, and that's why they place a high value on their own readiness before making the next steps and being cautious around decisions. Just on the point about communicating through memes. For those that work on Wall Street that are watching this, that maybe it's not normal in a presentation to see a meme. I remember only a couple of years ago, the first time I was in a business meeting and there was a slide deck and there was a meme in it. I remember thinking, that's so unprofessional. Wow. Like that's so weird to see some GIF in a presentation, and now it's constant, right? Constant. It's like every meeting I'm in, every slide basically is a meme. I know that hasn't made its way to certain circles out in the general business community, including probably some people watching this, but that's just the way they communicate. I mean, even in the workplace. Yeah. Much can be said with a simple GIF or meme. It's great. Exactly. Another influence is that information for Gen Z is everywhere, and it encompasses everything. Social media has really enabled Gen Z to fully absorb and also create a wide range of information, opinions, take from the world's biggest problems to problems that might not seem as big, but also still massively impactful things. How you expect your boyfriend to show up or who pays for the first date. This also at times can create a sort of emotional whiplash. One time, one second, you're looking at a quick reel that gives you anger, another one that gives you joy. Another element is that this is something we constantly hear from researchers, the feeling of being under surveillance and hyper-scrutiny. Whether or not it's online of saying, "I feel hesitant to share my opinion," or, "I'm really cautious about what I'm going to share this photo of myself, so I'm going to focus a lot on curating." To being in a classroom and saying, "Yes, I'm around a lot of people, but I'm just worried that someone might film me giving the wrong answer to the professor." That saying, "Oh, I do want to text this person I want to be friends with, but what if they screenshot it and what if this might damage my reputation? I get canceled. Exactly. This is a big problem in academia. Absolutely. Of students not expressing their opinion in the classroom because they're afraid they'll get canceled. Totally. Yeah. This is a big fear. Of course, it has implications on self-presentation and curation, both of yourself and the information that you're receiving. Absolutely. Another misconception that we regularly hear is that, oh, Gen Z are not open to romance, they're kind of done with dating, or it's not a priority. We very much disagree. Unequivocally, we hear time and time again in the research that Gen Z daters absolutely do believe in human connection. They're just defining how and when they want to get there on their own terms. We conducted a study with the Kinsey Institute at the end of last year, and one of the key findings was that four in five Gen Z singles believe that they will find true love. This is amazing. This is a significant majority. What was really telling is that it was actually statistically significantly higher than total 18+ singles. Not only do they want it, they might want it more than we look at the total single population. They overwhelmingly still want to find love, and they're comfortable using technology as part of this process. If there's anything to take away, it's that the desire for human connection absolutely remains durable, but what's evolving are their expectations for how they want to connect, when it should happen, and we're trying to evolve our tools to make sure we can support them in the ways that make sense for them and how they want to. Love is not lost. Definitely not lost. It's been canceled. No. No. Okay. Love hasn't been canceled. Yeah. Okay. Very much alive. Good. Max has done a really fantastic job of laying out the broader context that are shaping Gen Z. We want to get a little bit more specific of what we at Match Group are looking at when we think about Gen Z. There are really four core expectations shaping how they connect that we're going to dive into today. The first one is agency, right. The insistence that connection must be on their own terms and on their own timelines. Another important one is realness. As a generation that we've talked about who's grown up online in the public eye, they're looking for authenticity, for humanness, for realness across everything that they do. That leads really nicely into momentum. Momentum is where function and emotion really meet. It's the functional desire for lower friction, but also the need for the emotional experience to be valid, to feel true, and to feel like it's moving forward. Of course, we'll dive into trust. This is so important that the emotional and physical safety feels present and true so that you can be your authentic self and show up with that realness that they're craving. Held together, these four pillars, these themes really describe how the expectations around Gen Z are shaping and changing and evolving when it comes to connection. Going to dive deeper into all of them, but first, we're going to dive into agency. Because relationship and connection, as Max was just saying, still really matters for Gen Z. They want connection, but they're demanding it fit their lives and not the other way around. Which is why we see that 44% of under 30s want to spend time on my friends instead of love, or about 1:4 of under 30s list getting into a relationship as a primary goal for next year. We see that they want it, but what we do see that's a little different with Gen Z is that the hierarchy of priority falls in a different order than it does in other generations. Things like identity exploration, preparedness, friendship, and community, career, and personal growth are supplanting the dating sometimes here and there. Increasingly, people want connection to fit their lives rather than organizing their lives around connection. That's an important thing that we're paying attention to, is that the agency and desire and the timelines are a little bit different for Gen Z. I want to interrupt you and ask about identity exploration. Yeah. One, the percent of Gen Z that identify as seeking potential partners of either gender. is fascinating and very different from prior generations. Can one or both of you talk to that and why you think that is? Yeah. Yeah. I can start. I'll start. Yeah. We do see in the data that. Yeah. with younger Gen Z, 18-24, a higher instance of exploring it and figuring it out and diving a little bit deeper. Tools like that we provide actually help them explore that and poke around because it is more socially acceptable to be a bit more open, to be a bit more exploratory. This generation takes advantage of that, which is really exciting, I think. Yeah, exactly. I think it just goes on a longer trajectory of just being more openness to, for example, if we're talking about sexual identity, queer representation in the media, and all these cultural artifacts help them feel more comfortable. Yeah. It's just wonderful to hear in schools all across the country that many just feel open to even questioning masculinity norms, not even just necessarily sexual identity. This ties into the earlier insight on mental wellness and that. For many Gen Z, there is great space and digital communities play a big role in making them feel comfortable for people like them to even question, not necessarily change their sexual identity or explore, but just being open to the idea that things might be fluid. I'm just learning. I'm in this process of self-discovery. Alongside agency, which is definitely something that is more of an internal driver when you think about the human experience, our next one that we want to explore is both internal and external, and that's around authenticity and realness. One thing we hear consistently from all of the young people that we speak to is they want their experiences and their connections and their interactions to feel more genuine, to feel more real. With this, they want this authenticity, but there's also this pressure of perfectionism, judgment, and of course, rejection that goes alongside of this. Because this pressure to be perfect online is making this authentic connection that they crave a little bit harder and a lot more vulnerable. This fear of rejection in particular is one that we pay a lot of attention to in this category, because there's this concern about how they're being perceived. This makes dating feel really high stakes and super high pressure. Because when you've grown up in a world that's online, that anything can be snapped at a fingertips moment, and in these spaces, these social spaces that reward reactions and judgments and tear downs, showing up authentically becomes a really high-stakes act of vulnerability in your day-to-day. As a result, it's not so surprising when 81% of Gen Z want to move more slowly when getting to know someone more romantically. They want to really understand the playing board before they dive in and get vulnerable. There's also the fact that Gen Z is 1.7 x more likely than total singles to be fearful of the dating process because of others' opinions, because of that prospect of judgment. This reality is really why we so often hear from users that they want lower pressure, higher context opportunities to get to know themselves and to know other people. Because this desire for self-expression is one that opens you up for vulnerability, but also opens you up for better connection in the long run. We're going to talk in a moment about the implications on our product roadmap and sort of what we're doing about all this. Let me be devil's advocate here for a second. You're saying young people get stressed out about potential rejection because there's this need to be performative and perfect, but dating apps sort of are all about putting yourself out there and subjecting yourself to rejection? Your profile is being shown and most people are choosing, no, they don't want to interact with you. How can dating apps have product market fit then if this generation is so worried about rejection? Their whole premise is kind of rejection-oriented. Dating has always had rejection as a key piece of it, whether it's on the dating apps or not, right? You put yourself out there to see if someone wants it, and you get your answer based off of that other person. Ways to combat this is to offer Gen Z the signals and the context that they've grown up with and that they crave. Things like more detail, like your astrology sign or your favorite Music Mode or campaign there offers these signals that they're accustomed to, and being more fluent in those in the experience allows them to better find a match more quickly and more efficiently, and hopefully reduce that friction. Mm-hmm. Okay. Awesome. Showing up authentically, as we've said, takes effort, it takes energy, and it takes time, which brings us to our next pillar, which is momentum. For Gen Z, momentum is really twofold, right? It's this perspective of efficacy in function as well as the emotional piece of it. Functionally, people want to see results and actions as a result of their effort, right? That is just a human desire, I would say. For Gen Z, particularly in this category, it's about quality over quantity. At the same time, it's also about that feeling like you're moving forward. That even though a match or a date isn't your person, isn't your end game, that you feel like you've taken, you've learned and earned something out of it, that you've got momentum, that you're moving forward, which is why I love this quote that I will read to you from a young female non-user actually, and saying that, "I'm really intentional with how I use dating apps. Even if I get a lot of likes, I only respond to people who feel like they could genuinely go somewhere. I want to make sure we're actually compatible before I invest time on meeting up in person." In this language, there's so much here, right? You've got that functional language of investing time, but there's also that emotion because this is a vulnerable space to be in of are we compatible? Do I feel like this is going to work? That's why momentum is something that we pay a lot of attention to, in not only the experience, but in the actions that we build that they hopefully take. Because when it comes to this experience, Gen Z wants to see and feel the fruits of their efforts and their labors. They're not necessarily asking for more interactions, but definitely asking for better ones or ones that make sense to them no matter what. The goal of what we do, everything here at Match Group is to move from match to spark to real-world interaction with less of that wasted effort. When we talk about momentum, we're really talking about relevance. It's quality. It's helping connections actually go somewhere. That is a huge key piece of this experience and the emotion that sort of laces the backdrop across of it. If you take the really long-term, say, 10-year view, is it fair to say that 10 or maybe 15 years ago, there was more novelty to online dating and the bar has been raised? The user expectation around product efficacy is a lot higher today. The entertainment value or the novelty has faded, and now it's all about does this thing actually get me out on dates? Absolutely. We think about the context in which we show up a lot, right? On someone's phone home screen, we're alongside things like Amazon, Uber, food order apps. There's this expectation that in that experience, you're going to get what you ask for. You're going to get what you decide. Those contexts, they're a part of the groundwater. It's important that we keep that in mind, that the efficacy is a piece of it. Also just take care of the beautifully vulnerable spaces that we're operating into. Right. Yeah, when you describe it like that and you think about the other apps where you get basically instant satisfaction, we already have a lot of challenges in this category because the best possible case is you open the app, you get a match, and you get into a conversation right away. Even still, there's friction to get to an in-person date that's going to take a couple days, a couple- Totally There's lots of friction. Keep that alive, too. Right. It just increases the burden on us to improve efficacy of product with things like better recommendation algorithms or better ways to start conversations inside of chat or a more performant app or all these features that we focus on are more important than ever. Absolutely. Exactly. To Emily's point, agency remains essential. People want to move at different timelines. Yes. Not everybody's on the same timeline and might want to feel comfortable scheduling a date or even exchanging contact information after a week or two when others prefer to do it immediately and assess compatibility and vibes more in person. Yeah, absolutely. This is a perfect segue because none of this works without trust. Trust is the starting point for us at Match Group, but more importantly for Gen Z. Trust isn't just table stakes, right? It's the foundation for showing up as their real selves, both emotionally and physically. There's that physical safety piece of it, too. It's shaped everything Gen Z has navigated outside of our ecosystems, too. As you were so wonderfully stating up at the top, that this generation has come of age amid real uncertainty, whether it's economic pressure or political instability, rapid social change, global pandemics. This context really, really matters, and it shapes them at a very formative time of their lives. When the world outside feels really unpredictable and unsteady, the stakes of personal vulnerability really change. When you think about sharing who you are, risking that rejection that we were just speaking about, trusting a stranger, that feels really, really high in this seemingly unstable and uncertain world. With this context as a backdrop, it makes sense that when we speak to these young people, that around one in three 18- 29-year-old singles have concerns about sharing their info on dating apps, right? Of putting themselves out there in those ways. Or that 35% of 18- 29-year-old women note that they fear feeling about being misled by someone's intentions on the app or even their identity during the dating process, right? You need to pay attention to these signals to feel comfortable. Trust and safety aren't separate from the dating backdrop. They're really, truly tied to it and lay such a key piece of the foundation of showing up in order to connect and find romance. This generation can be cautious about identity, about intentions, about information that they're sharing and promoting. If users don't feel safe or comfortable, they won't engage meaningfully. It's a really, really important piece of the puzzle that we pay a lot of attention to. The intersection of physical safety and emotional safety is interesting. What popped into my head when you were talking, Emily, I'm an alumni interviewer for my college, and I've interviewed five to 10 high school seniors for the last 25 years. I've got a pretty good longitudinal. I'm sure. Interaction. I noticed about five years ago, maybe seven years ago, these high school seniors started bringing their parents, or they would say, "My parent is waiting in the car outside. At first, that was a little surprising. That's one of the tests of this is to see if they have their act together as a high school senior, and they can be self-motivated and organized, and I was like, I didn't think that much of it. The last couple of years, increasingly, the parent is in the Starbucks with them at another table or nearby, or even if I do it in my office, they ask if they can wait in the lobby. It's that intersection of physical safety because they know they're meeting a stranger, and they want to make sure that they're safe, but also emotional safety. They know there's someone nearby that's there for them. Yeah. It's really changed in those 25 years. No, it's a great example, and it's that crossover that makes you be you, right? Right. That they can hopefully ace the interview and go to the school of their dreams. Right. Taking all these insights together, these are not just interesting observations, although many of them are. They really are baked into our product strategy. I think Maxie did a great job describing, at the beginning, just how global and deeply embedded this research is. If research doesn't also make its way into the product and our marketing, then it's only academically interesting. It's not actually applied. We've done a really good job of making sure that we apply these types of insights into our product development. I'm not sure that was always the case in years past. I think one of the reasons that Match Group kind of lost its way there for a couple of years and maybe missed some of these changing consumer attitudes as Gen Z aged into our category was because either we didn't have the network of consumer insights and/or it wasn't well baked into product development and marketing. I feel like today we're in a much, much better place on both those fronts. Just to tick through some of the products. Tinder's role is not to become Hinge. Tinder is all about possibility and discovery and lower pressure connections. The Tinder roadmap that leverages these types of insights has been focused on building features like Events and Double Date, which help make dating more social and less isolated. Astrology Mode, which gives users this lighter weight way to start a conversation and express their personality. Are You Sure? and Does This Bother You?, which create more respectful interactions. We're really encouraged by a lot of these features and how they're doing. Hinge is approaching this same generation, from a different relationship mindset. The way Hinge focuses on these types of things, oh, if we can go to the next slide, please. Thank you. Is by focusing on fewer but more meaningful interactions. Hinge features like Friends Take or Date Ideas or Signals, which is a badge that indicates whether you're there on Hinge with true intentionality or Match Note. These are all features that ladder up to helping people show that they're there with care and context. Tinder's about lowering the stakes for discovery, so it's a more chill, relaxed environment, and Hinge is about raising the bar for intentional dating. We think these two brands coexist really well, and even though they're both going after, to a large extent, people in the same age demographic, we think they serve different consumer needs. A metaphor that I like to use that we've talked a lot about is the difference between a music festival and a music concert. Yeah. If you have tickets to a music concert, you know you're going to see Ariana Grande, Sabrina Carpenter, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, whoever. Now you know my musical taste. You've got tickets for that show at a particular point in time. You know what you're going to get. In fact, I just took five Gen Z friends of my kids to a concert, and they were looking at the setlist ahead of time, which is posted online, and I was like, "Don't you want the serendipity of not knowing what songs are going to" I would never have looked at a setlist when I was their age. And they're like, "No, I want to know what I'm going to get. I'm going there with intentionality." That's a concert, that's like Hinge. Going to a festival, like a BottleRock or a Governors Ball or a Coachella, that's about kind of vibing your way through the experience and the serendipity of, maybe I'll watch four or five songs, and if I'm enjoying it, I'll stay for the whole set. Maybe I'll leave and I'll go to this other set that's playing at the same time, or I'll go check out some of the experiential brand activations and sort of find my way through that. The journey is the destination. Yeah In the case of the festival. Young people love concerts, they love festivals, but they play different roles, and that's how we think about Hinge relative to Tinder. I think, next slide, please. Max, over to you for some thoughts on the next generation. Thanks. Also love that metaphor. I did too. It was my favorite. The category's next generation of Gen Alpha is already forming. They're coming into their own identity, and we're seeing a lot of their social and emotional behaviors. First and foremost, Gen Alpha are very young. They're ages two to 1 5 years old. For the purposes of this, when we're talking about our research with Gen Alpha, we're really referring to older Gen Alpha and some research that we conducted amongst 14 and 15-year-olds with parental consent. We did this research to validate that the work that we're doing right now for Gen Z and younger Gen Z, for Tinder and Hinge and our products across the portfolio, will resonate once Gen Alpha turn 18, are ready to start dating on our products. From the preliminary research, which should absolutely be treated as an early signal and not at all a forecast, we remain quite optimistic of some of the preliminary findings. For example, older Gen Alpha are less pandemic defined. They're more optimistic and even in some ways enthusiastic about adulthood. They talk about their really thoughtful relationship that they have with technology and their phones and social media. Three in four of Gen Alpha are open to dating throughout their high school experiences. Again, these are really promising signals, and what's behind it, we think, are many different underlying factors. One of which is that their parents are mostly Millennials. Millennials who have seen this transition and understand a counterfactual of what a life like and social interactions were pre-pandemic. Another one is that in many jurisdictions across the country, schools, particularly public schools, have implemented phone bans. This in particular, we've heard from these older Gen Alpha, have really changed the way in which they're connecting in lunchrooms, the playground, even at recess and times, and what they expect and how they use their time during their extracurriculars and at home. It really differently changes the ways in which they engage with social media and consume different forms of media. I see this in my own situation. I have a 21-year-old who is Gen Z. She had phones in school. Missed critical years of high school and the beginning of college because of COVID-19. She is very similar to the way you're describing Gen Z, which is kind of reticent to put yourself out there. Then I've got a 15-year-old who have no phones in school because the ban happened since then. She has positive recollections of the pandemic because that was like a fun time when I got to be at home, but it didn't kind of affect the way she forms human connection. She and her friends are super social. They do date. They hook up. They do big group hangs at people's houses, like very, very social. It's very different between the Gen Alpha and the Gen Z. Is it fair to say, maybe, am I generalizing or is Gen Alpha a likely reversion to the mean, where from a dating app standpoint, You think look more like past generations or not? Not sure yet, or what do you think? It's a little early to say because those signals. Yeah. However, both might be true. We do see some that they have some shared DNA with younger Gen Z. They are also digitally native. They are very fluent with some of these mental health language, as well as using these different tools for connecting online. That is very comfortable and native to them. At the same time, these are promising signals that potentially a lot of these milestones might go back to what they were in older generational cohorts because they were less defined by the pandemic. The face-to-face interaction that they're having is still happening in their critical times of cognitive development and social development. Too early to see. Optimistic. Asking the right questions. Yeah. Yeah. We discussed a little bit about different trends regarding sexuality and sexual preference. Another thing that occurs to me that's different than Millennials is Gen Z and Gen Alpha potentially is relationship with alcohol. Tell us more about that and what impact you think that has on these generations. Yes. There's a lot of mixed information about alcohol consumption. Generally, it does appear in many ways for Gen Z to be down compared to generational cohorts, but it's not just overall consumption. It's more interesting to look at what types of alcohol are being consumed, because in some ways, like in some particular brands, we do see a growth. Yeah. That absolutely does impact behaviors. To your point exactly on like the festivals versus concerts, we are seeing Gen Z, again, also the mental health language, prioritizing wellness in different ways, and one of that does mean reducing the amount of alcohol consumption. This is not a generalization. We still know that there is a lot of alcohol consumption occurring amongst Gen Z who are over 21 on college campuses and other places. Yes, to a large extent, it is impacting social behaviors and what the nightlife scene looks like. Look around in L.A. as well, and you can see a 10:00 P.M. Yeah, we see the different events in L.A., the dry ones are very popular. Exactly. Yeah The ones that are more about self-improvement or learning or personal growth. Pottery class is- Exactly. Mahjong Mahjong is as popular or more popular than happy hour. Yeah. Exactly. I think we're going to turn to questions. We've got a lot of great questions here. Some have come in from some Wall Street analysts, and some of them have included their names. I'll include their names for attribution. Some of the questions have come in anonymously, but I'll just jump in here. Cory Carpenter from JP Morgan asks, "How do younger Gen Z and older Gen Z behave, and are there major differences between older and younger Gen Z? We define older Gen Z as 25-29, and what really defines them is life stage. We take a really close look at life stage across Gen Z because, as we've stated, Gen Z is not a monolith. They have a lot of nuance and detail. What we do see with older Gen Z is because they're older, they're more comfortable in these app spaces and leveraging dating apps in order to go on dates to find those connections. Because they're less socially embedded in their networks, like from university or early school places, like younger Gen Z is. Younger Gen Z, which is 18-24, they really find that they're socially embedded more so, as mentioned, because they're in those university spaces, those early schooling spaces. It's easier to meet new people when you're. It's easier to meet people by proximity. Higher up. Right Higher up. Right They're comfortable with that, as we were just discussing with some of how COVID-19 sort of impacted their formative developmental years. What is really notable is that across both cohorts, regardless of life stage, is they actually both rank number one intent is serious relationships, that they want something longer term. The way that they approach that and access that is different based off of the life stage that they're currently active in. Of course, that varies across life stage too. You've got some people that may be 28, just broke up a very serious relationship. They might be seeking and sourcing relationships differently than someone their same age who hasn't had that longer term or something more serious as a relationship breakup like that. Totally. I'm thinking of a conversation we had recently with a younger Gen Z woman of 23. I believe she was in Raleigh, and she says, "Oh, yeah, I absolutely want a serious relationship, but I'm really going to put it into high gear when I'm much older. Yeah. I was like, "Okay, when is that? 25?" It's like when the next life stage is. To Emily's point, readiness and life stage play a massive role, but again, there is still this fundamental desire for a meaningful connection as the goal. It's just how and when they want to approach it looks a bit different. Okay. This user or this listener asks, "Do you think Gen Z will age into more traditional dating behaviors, or are they permanently changing the category? I believe they will. I believe that traditional milestones will prevail, and that we're seeing this, again, to Emily's point on the real importance of life stage and readiness, that yes, we're seeing that as they're getting older, they are going into these more traditional milestones, whether it's about connection or more broadly, trends that we're seeing around moving out of their parents' home, finding a certain sense of economic or financial stability. Yeah. Yeah. When I was running Zillow for a long time, we did a lot of research on this question around home ownership because as homes became less affordable, as the sharing economy grew and people were not buying cars, they were using ride sharing, or they were not buying their own music, they were using streaming, or not buying their own DVDs, they were watching streaming TV and film. There was this question of, Are people just not going to want to own homes anymore, and it's going to become kind of a renter nation? We did tons and tons of consumer research on it, and the answer is no. People still want to own homes. Yeah. They're just going to do it later. Exactly. The median age for a first-time home buyer now is 40, and it used to be 30 about a decade ago. They still want to own homes. It's still very high on their aspiration list, and they're still going to. They're just doing it later in life. Yeah. It sounds like you think something similar is applying to this category? Absolutely, that's why we spoke to Gen Z. It's the timeline that's shifted a little bit in how they want to get there. It's not always linear, but as Seth stated, number 1 intent is a serious relationship. They still want it. It's just a matter of the journey of getting there and when they hit that milestone. I have a question which wasn't submitted, but I feel like it's sort of the elephant in the room. Why does Gen Z not want meaningless hookups the way millennials did when they were 18-25 and hookups were okay, and now there's a stigma against shallow, meaningless hookups? It sounds like all the research we've shared is that they don't want that. They want more intentionality. What's wrong with hookups, and why doesn't Gen Z like them? I would argue that not all millennials wanted meaningless hookups at the time, but it's more so that it was accepted as a social norm, as one of the process to finding a meaningful relationship. Okay. There was a lot of social pressure, that this is one of the ways to demonstrate interest and signal interest. Gen Z, as mentioned with the prioritization and understanding of readiness and mental health, said this isn't the only way to get there. Yeah. There are other ways to demonstrate interest and more authentic connections that are not solely rooted on sexuality, of ways to court and find companionship and express values. The norms are changing, more so of expressed desires, the way that they seek companionship. This translates to sexual behaviors, the fundamental desire for human connection is ultimately the same. Yeah, absolutely. It brings to mind this discussion that we had around vice and alcohol, right? There's this desire in an unstable environment of control and controlling the things that you can, I think that's why we see a lot of reduction in some of these mind-altering vices. That changes, that goes similarly with sexuality, actually engaging in sex. You reduce control, you reduce risk of cancellation, of doing something wrong. I think in that subsegment of Gen Z is also probably an emotional response to why there's some of that reduction in sex. Okay. Jason Helfstein from Oppenheimer asks, "Gen Z appears to lack certain social norms that would facilitate successful dating. As such, even successful matches don't seem to convert to dates, or first dates don't convert to second dates. Do you feel this is something Match Group needs to address or correct to make Tinder or Hinge successful over the long term? I think the way we view it is that Gen Z has their own set of social norms. A lot of those exist digitally. As you were just mentioning with memes and GIFs showing up in the workspace, that is a fluency and a way and a social norm to communicate. You don't send someone a text to explain how you're feeling. You send them your favorite meme or your favorite sticker, your favorite emoji, which is a beautifully artful way to communicate your emotions, but that is the baseline social norm. The way that we use that and translate that for our products and our purposes is giving and offering higher context ways to communicate, right? It's offering things like a Music Mode or an Astrology Mode on Tinder to really showcase those signals and that juicy context and details that they're craving. That those social norms can be embedded in that experience and used to find a higher quality. Better match in that way. On the research side, this is why it's important to triangulate different sources of evidence. There are so many different ways to define and interpret those norms. For example, if you do a survey, and we do surveys like this all the time, where you say, "What was your most recent date?" What is a date to a Gen Z is so different from all. Yeah. Different generations. Oh, yeah. For the social norms of Millennials, many might think, oh, one-on-one could be let's get a drink at the bar. For Gen Z, this might be the third or fourth date already. What might be in some ways traditionally constructed in a survey as a date, they're already there, and this is why Tinder is building things like Events or Double Date to reshape and meet them where they are. In Double Date now, where on Tinder you can indicate your Date Ideas. Exactly. Many of the things listed there of Date Ideas, people of my generation wouldn't think of as a date. Exactly. I was talking to a Gen Alpha person the other day actually, and I used the term date, and they kind of looked at me kind of weird and she said, "Well, no, it's not really a date. It's more of a low-key kickback. Yeah. That's how she was describing what she and two, three girls, two, three guys were doing. It wasn't a date. I would call that a triple date. That is like, whoa, that's very intense. For millennials, we're just hanging out. Yeah. Exactly. Totally. Okay. Benjamin Black from Deutsche Bank asks, "Within dating, authenticity is clearly very important, particularly for Gen Z. How do you preserve authenticity in a world of AI, where prompts and profiles are increasingly leverage AI editing tools and AI recommendations?" Max, why don't you start with describing Gen Z's perception vis-à-vis AI, and then have Emily talk about how we bring it into the product? Sure. First of all, to a very large extent, Gen Z are already using AI in many different ways, whether it's at work, whether it's through school to help them with assignments or summarize large swaths of information. Many Gen Z are very comfortable, and they tell us, and we see that they are using AI essentially in their daily lives. It looks a bit different when it comes to meaningful connections, and many Gen Z tell us that when it comes to building products or even if it's other things, not just dating apps, the internal tooling doesn't really matter. It's more important that they're getting the outcomes that the things they want. When it comes to our apps, it's that AI should help connect people better in the real world. They just want better dating outcomes. They want to be able to connect and make new friends in different ways. How they get there is not as important to them, more so it's just getting to that destination in the way that fits for them. Yeah, absolutely. I think the way that we think about AI, particularly with our products, as you mentioned, it's about connecting people better, more quickly to the real world. Within that, as we were just talking about agency, we want to make sure the user is always in the driver's seat and that their choice isn't reduced, but their momentum is increased. AI really provides the depth and scale that allows us to do that. One way we see that across Hinge really wonderfully is AI prompts recommendations. It's that partner and that friend in the journey with you. Just like you would text your girlfriend like, "Oh my gosh, this is what they said. This is what I'm thinking of responding. What do you think?" Using AI as a partner in that process, because that increases your agency and makes you feel more confident, and hopefully helps you land that conversation a little bit more strongly. I think another really wonderful way that we've been implementing AI is in that trust and safety space. Because again, it gives you that depth and that scale to make sure we're considering all of the angles in this increasingly dynamic, technological world that we're navigating. What I'm hearing is we want to make sure that AI brings people closer together, doesn't stand in between them. Yes. We want to make sure that it increases authenticity, not creating superficiality. For example, in chat, if a chat kind of slows down and people aren't flirting or talking anymore, we might use AI to make a suggestion to one of them of, "Hey, on her profile, she talked about these interests. They're similar to yours. Why don't you start a conversation about that?" We wouldn't likely draft that exact copy for the user because that would be crossing a line. Yeah. towards inauthenticity. Yeah. The user needs to be in the driver's seat. It's ultimately them that pen it and click send, but we love the partnership and the tooling to help them. Right. That best version of themselves. It's about amplifying them rather than replacing them. Yeah. It might be tempting to draft it for the user so they can just hit submit, but then on the receiving end, that receiver will also get offered that, and then they'll know that probably it wasn't an. Yeah. overture from the other person. Exactly. the authenticity breaks down. To the earlier point on scrutiny, Gen Z are always oftentimes questioning whether things are AI. Like anybody across any generational cohort, there are false positives and negatives of what we think might be AI-generated, but there is this skepticism. Again, to Emily's point, preserving the sense of authenticity and ensuring agency is really crucial for the user experience across our products. Yeah. I guess another example would be on photos. We do provide an AI ability to improve the lighting or the clarity of a photo, but we don't let you change the background of the photo. Exactly. If it's a picture of you on a couch, it's still going to be a picture of you on a couch. We're not going to put you at the beach or in front of the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty, implying that you've been to those places. That would be an inauthentic use of AI. Exactly. Nathan Feather from Morgan Stanley asks, "With the goal of quality over quantity, how do you get users to slow down when using the product to try and encourage a more thorough analysis of any individual profile? How do you make sure to highlight the potential most relevant profiles such that they aren't skipped?" Emily, why don't you talk about some of the ways that we're trying to improve. Absolutely. Profile quality and people's. Yeah. Review of profiles. There's a lot of ways to do this. Again, this brings up the pillar of momentum, right? We want people to feel like they're moving forward with efficacy. There's also the right level of speed. We don't want things to be too quickly because you might miss something. You might be making rash decisions versus being intentional and thoughtful about it. Again, one way that I know we're doing this at Tinder is by increasing those Signals on profiles and apps in that way. Music Mode when you're looking at, oh, Max and I both like this one artist, this one song. That slows things down for you. That lets you have a bit of a signal of what Max is like in real life. Sure. You can imagine driving in Max's car and us playing this song and connecting over that, right? That slows people down to pay a little bit more attention to the profile, the bio, the details therein, in order to increase that efficacy and give momentum forward at the right pace. Yeah. Another example is, we now on Tinder, we put prompt content, so that's written words, prose, into the photo carousel. Yeah. Instead of just looking at photos in the photo carousel, we're kind of intermingling responses to prompts like, "What do you like to do on a Sunday?" Or, "What's your relationship with your friends like?" into the photo carousel, which definitely slows you down because now all of a sudden you have to read words. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Instead of looking at a photo. It gives people kind of a more considered experience when assessing actual compatibility. Absolutely. Actually, it's important also to remember that this overall topic of getting people to slow down, consider an authentic profile, this is really more of a Match Group initiative. Cross-brand. Obviously, Hinge does this very well already with a contextual like feature, where when you are looking at a profile on Hinge, you're indicating interest in a particular element of the profile rather than just saying, "I'm interested in this person," you're saying, "I'm interested in this thing about this person." Upward, our brand that focuses on people with traditional values, has a feature called Chivalry Mode where if you are photo verified and you have a more complete profile and you respond as a good actor in messaging, then you are allowed to participate in Chivalry Mode. It's kind of a different experience that's more highly considered and a slower profile. We're taking these types of learnings across lots of our brands. Actually, Chispa, also our brand for Hispanic daters, is testing something similar now where it's kind of a more considered profile rather than a quick-twitch photo evaluation. These insights that we develop at the Match Group level or even at the Tinder level, we scale them across all of our brands. Okay, last question here from Andrew Marok from Raymond James. Andrew asks, "With the shift in behaviors from Millennials to Gen Z, how does that impact how to think about future generational differences? Are they assured, and what are some of the signs that you monitor for cohort shifts? How has this shift affected how the voices of different ages are heard internally? Would it make sense to staff product orgs with employees primarily in the core age range, as well as young users and new grads in order to catch emerging shifts before they fully take hold?" Max, I'll let you take the beginning of this. I think we've already talked a little bit about how do we make sure that we're bringing insights from all ages, and then maybe Emily or I will close with how we bring that into the actual room for decision-making. Yeah. We have a lot of internal leading and lagging indicators when it comes to cultural signals. These generational desires and changes in mindsets are sometimes very slow-moving and sometimes very fast, and you can't anticipate everything that's going to be completely changing the way a whole set of society thinks. Like it could be one social media post that fundamentally reframes the narrative around the ways that people approach dating, for example, or connection. We collect all of these signals. We try to map it to the underlying cultural shift that we talked about. For example, pandemic, the macroeconomic environmental perceptions and how that impacts long-term thinking and companionship with these smaller cultural signals. We also leverage historical data to look at what we have learned from the transition from Millennials to present. It's a mix. We don't have a crystal ball. There are a lot of brilliant people that we collaborate with the science of trying to understand and interpret these waves for building products. The best tool that we have are listening to Gen Z and understanding their desires and how they're engaging with cultural media, social content, and all these different forms to make sure that the way our product develops is moving in their direction and will continue to do so with future generational cohorts. Absolutely. I mean, this is definitely a benefit of Match Group's scale. There's no doubt in my mind that we have a larger team, and we have more resources focused on consumer insights with respect to human connection globally across all age cohorts than any competitor by far. It's definitely a strength of ours. In terms of bringing these insights into the room, your teams are in the rooms when we're making these decisions on product and marketing. We've also significantly increased our presence of younger employees. Yesterday, I spoke to our intern class of 30, our largest-ever intern class. It's incredibly important that we have summer interns who are college students that are hanging out with employees in the kitchen, doing work, contributing to decisions, and helping bring those insights directly into the company. We have custom GPTs, which have been really useful. For each of our key personas, we have AI incarnations of them that employees, including me, use constantly to talk to all these different users to get instantaneous feedback on all of this through AI. There are lots of ways, including, just hiring more young people who are in our primary age cohort, that we bring these insights into the room. Definitely. Thank you very much for joining us today for this first-ever CEO Connection. I hope that you walked away with a better understanding of Gen Z and how their expectations around connection are evolving and how we're thinking about the future of our category. I want to thank Emily and Max for sharing their information and thank those who submitted such thoughtful questions. We'll continue this conversation at our Q2 earnings call. In the meantime, I share regular updates on these types of topics on my socials, on LinkedIn, Instagram, and my other social channels. I'd love to continue the conversation. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you both very much. Thanks, Spencer. Thank You.