You matched with Adam.
“Hey cutie, how are you? xx”
“Do you want to go on a date?”
“Hello… are you still there…?”
Ahh…yes. The graveyard of ‘you up’ messages and the death of a thousand possible forever afters. If this trail of messages is familiar to you, firstly, I’m sorry. Secondly, I’m sorry. And shout out to anyone I’ve ghosted or anyone who’s ghosted me, if you’re currently reading this, hello.
There are few places that better capture the slow death of modern manners than a dating app inbox. And romance may be the clearest example, but it is hardly the only one. Across digital life, we have become strangely comfortable with a kind of ambient discourtesy: cancelling plans, ignoring messages, treating other people’s time as flexible, and confusing convenience with freedom. Of course, the internet did not invent bad manners, it just made it 10 times easier to disregard the basic niceties we once loved.
The Systems That Taught Us Bad Habits
For years, digital platforms were built around ease, abundance and endless possibility. More matches. More likes. More tabs. The user was queen, and every system was designed to maximise choice and minimise effort.
Somewhere along the way, digital experiences also made it easier to be careless towards each other. And we took it as permission to be so.
Dating apps make it incredibly easy to express interest and just as easy to abandon it. Unsurprisingly, we’re exhausted by the chase: 78% of Gen Z are experiencing dating app burn out.
We once idealised nonchalance, me included, and romanticised people who gave us absolutely nothing. Now there is a growing appetite for effort, clarity and people who behave as if there is actually a human on the receiving line of their behaviour.
Even Jacob Elordi, in his post-Wuthering Heights era, said he wants “the art of shame” to come back in style. So even Heathcliff is wingmaning us toward more self-awareness and a little more old-fashioned consideration. A reminder that full frontal honesty is deeply attractive.
What 2026 Edges Exposed – Modern Civility
There is an end in sight. This year’s Edges Report from Omnicom’s cultural intelligence unit, Backslash points to a shift back to modern civility.
Whilst we’ve dissolved many norms that once constrained us, we’ve also shed some of our good manners in the process. In the pursuit of the ‘self’, digital life has led us to normalise a lack of chivalry, which once made us swoon.
Gen Z and Millennials are positioning themselves as the protagonist of their own story. Whilst this gives permission to be authentically oneself, it also cultivated a self-centric lens of life, often overlooking others because we’re too busy wondering what character we’ll be next.
No surprise then, we treat the ‘liked’ section on dating apps like Tamagotchis, ignoring their needs (and inavertedly our own), to die, a slow, starved death.
What Hinge Understood
Through my own strictly professional research, I noticed Hinge had introduced a conversation limit – forcing me to only have eight people waiting on my reply at a time.
This ‘Your Turn Limit’ prevents you from sending new likes until you’ve replied to the ones you already have. It keeps users accountable in a space where manners easily slip. After all…you wouldn’t wait 15 hours to reply to someone in a real-life conversation…You’d hope.
This small design choice has reportedly increased response rates on Hinge by 20 per cent. Moves from brands like this are helping hold up a mirror to our shortcomings in self-interest and are giving us a nudge toward a kinder, more polite way of life.
This doesn’t mean app design can make us morally better. But it can make being better easier by rewarding follow-through instead of flakiness.
Better Behaviour Is A Design Choice
Enough about my single chronicles. Let’s talk design. Because Hinge is not really fixing romance, if it did, I wouldn’t still be on there. But it is correcting a behaviour digital culture helped normalise - endless choice and the ability to treat people as infinitely swipeable.
For years, brands have been obsessed with removing every possible obstacle. Making things Faster. Easier. Smoother. But not every barrier is a bad one. Sometimes a little structure is exactly what stops us from tipping into carelessness – something the Edges report calls ‘digital friction’.
People don’t necessarily want limitless freedom from one another. Often, they want better ways of being with each other. More sweat. More effort. More courtesy.
For marketers and product designers, the opportunity is not to blame people. It is to guide them. To design experiences that do not just optimise for personal ease but also make space for mutual respect.
The most resonant brands in the next era will be the ones that understand when to challenge their users and enforce useful barriers.
In a world of AI shortcuts, synthetic smoothness and half-hearted interactions, consideration starts to look a lot like our missing humanness. So, the real question is: can design choices make good manners feel natural?
This may sound small but it’s how norms change, one swipe at a time.
The want for “Proof of Human” is rising. Modern Civility is just one sign.
Lillian Busby is a junior strategist at TBWA\Melbourne.
