npr:

Nate Koch isn’t sure what to make of the online dating scene.

“There’s no rules,” the 23-year-old Colorado resident says. “We don’t know what to do on these apps. It feels like kind of, like, the Wild West.”

And it can often feel extremely time-consuming and unproductive, says Koch, a recent college graduate. “I’m literally applying to jobs at the same time that I’m dating. The similarity between the two is a little, like, horrifying to me,” he says.

The confusion over the rules of romance in the digital age shared by Koch and so many others might explain why millions of Americans are having less sex than previous generations did at the same age. Add in a focus on building a career before having a family, and it all may be contributing to a national birthrate that keeps falling.

All this raises alarms for the economy. Economies need new workers to replace older workers as they retire. When a nation’s birthrate drops too low, certain sectors can experience employee shortages, and ultimately, the economy might shrink.

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