We are going to say something no dating app has ever been willing to say out loud. Dating in Sweden is in crisis. Not the kind of crisis you fix with a better algorithm or a catchier campaign. A deeper one. A cultural one. We know because we just spent 10,000,000 kronor trying to fix it, and what we found in the data was hard to ignore.
We Earned the Right to Say This
Over the past three months, Smitten invested 10M SEK into Sweden.
We are the only app with BankID verification, tailoring the dating experience for the Swedish market.
We ran campaigns across the country: billboards, partnerships, social media and events. We worked with the top content creators and influencers in the country. We partnered with one of Sweden’s most prominent podcast and TV personalities, known for his distinctive voice and strong cultural presence, and an iconic fashion influencer whose ick list made her the most talked-about single in Sweden, and reached millions of Swedes with one simple demand: that dating should be enjoyable, and that people should expect more from it.
We surveyed over a thousand people. We watched how they behaved on the app. At the peak of the campaign, Smitten was growing faster than Hinge and Tinder (the two largest dating apps in the world) in the Swedish market.
We went looking for a marketing story. We found a cultural crisis.
Three Years, Four Million Swipes, One Conclusion
We have spent three years here. We have watched. We have taken notes.
What the data shows is not a picture of a country that cannot find love. It is a picture of a country that has quietly, incrementally, stopped trying.
This is what the numbers look like:
In three years, the average Swedish man has gone from 5.4 conversations a month to 1.4. The average Swedish woman from 11.3 to 3.8. Engagement across the app has fallen nearly 20% every single year. This is not a blip. It is a direction.
These numbers mirror what is happening across Sweden broadly. According to Internetstiftelsen's Svenskarna och Internet 2025, Sweden's own national study of internet behaviour, the share of singles actively using dating apps across all platforms has fallen from 27% in 2022 to 18% in 2025. Our data is not the exception. It is the confirmation.
The generation that should be driving this market is leading the retreat. Among Swedes aged 16 to 34, dating app usage has dropped from 43% to 25% in just three years. The people who grew up with these apps are leaving them fastest.
Sweden's drop is the steepest across all Nordic countries, and it is accelerating.
Sweden vs The Neighbours. It Is Not Close.
Sweden does not look like its neighbours on any of these metrics. In addition to Sweden, we operate in Denmark, Norway, and Iceland, and the contrast is striking.
Sweden starts more conversations than any other market we operate in. 42% of matches convert to at least one message, the highest rate in the Nordics. Swedes are excellent at the opening line. What happens immediately after is a mystery we are still investigating.
Because when Swedes do talk, the median conversation is 19 messages long. That is roughly the length of deciding where to eat and then not going. Denmark manages 34. Iceland - a country of 400,000 people who presumably run out of strangers quickly, averages 54. Icelanders are having conversations nearly three times longer than Swedes on the exact same app with the exact same features.
The profile data is equally stark. Sweden ranks last across every profile quality metric we track: fewest photos, fewest questions answered, lowest completion rate. Icelanders upload more photos, answer more questions, and fill out their profiles more completely, and they are using an app where they might literally match with their cousin! Sweden has no such excuse.
Swedish Men Want Casual. Swedish Women Want Everything. Nobody Is Getting Either.
Swedish women are the most selective daters in the region. For every 100 men they see, they swipe right on 7. They are not short of attention. They are short of attention worth having.
Swedish women have impossibly high standards. Swedish men have almost no game. The data proves both. And together, they have created the perfect conditions for an entire country to stop dating.
Swedish men send 72% of all first messages on Smitten. Women send 28%. Before you say anything: this is not a women are not trying situation. Swedish women handle four times as many daily conversations as men, overwhelmed by volume most men never see. Men send cold messages and women are busy managing the inbox, feeling like they are running customer support.
And here is what the likes data tells you about why. In Sweden, the top 10% of male profiles receive 47.7% of all likes that men get. The other 90% of Swedish men are splitting the remaining half between them. Women are not ignoring men. They are concentrating their attention on a very small number of them.
Here is what all that effort produces: silence, mostly.
57% of Swedish matches never exchange a single word. Not one. Two people looked at each other, said yes, and then did absolutely nothing about it. 47% of matches expire untouched. Another 10% end with someone hitting unmatch before the conversation begins. This should surprise nobody. Internetstiftelsen's 2025 national report found that even among active dating app users in Sweden, more than three times as many would rather meet someone in person than through an app. They are here, but they do not want to be.
Now consider what is on the other side of that match. Across the Nordics, men and women rarely want the same thing from dating apps. But nowhere is that gap wider than in Sweden. Swedish women are the least likely in the entire region to want something casual, less than Norway, less than Denmark, less than Iceland. Swedish men have not gotten that message.
Swedish women want connection. They dream about partnership. They believe in something real. And when someone does not clear that bar, they are gone. Fast. Over text.
When we spoke to women across Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö, they did not ask for much.
"Kind. Honest. Funny. Communicative. Not looks. Not height. Personality. And I am still not finding it." - Sofia, 27
"Men have a laissez faire attitude but I think women are looking for something more." - Maja, 31
Two groups of people. Same app. One wants the fairytale. One wants something casual. Neither is saying so. And somewhere in the silence between a match and a message that never comes, Swedish dating is disappearing.
It is not just playing out on the apps. Internetstiftelsen's 2025 report found that 7 in 10 Swedes Google their date before meeting them in person: checking for fake profiles, criminal records, home addresses. One woman described herself as "a vacuum cleaner on the internet," running checks across Ratsit, Lexbase, Krimfup, LinkedIn, Google and Instagram before a first date. The magic of romance has been replaced by the need to know everything first.
A comment appeared in the replies of one of our posts. We had not asked for opinions. Sweden offered one anyway.
"Välkommen 2026… Inte konstigt att så många är singlar och knappt dejtar längre."
Welcome to 2026. No wonder so many people are single and barely dating anymore.
Nobody's Hands Are Clean. Including Ours.
So why are we saying this? Because we are done pretending the current model works. The entire dating app industry has built businesses on the back of loneliness; optimising for engagement when it should have optimised for outcomes. We are not exempt from that criticism.
We started Smitten because we genuinely believe dating should be fun. Not performative. Not exhausting. Fun. And somewhere along the way, for us, and for the entire industry - it stopped being that. The data we collected this year is proof of what people have been feeling for a long time but nobody has been willing to say out loud.
This is not a campaign. It is a confession. Since launching in Sweden we have gone back to the drawing board entirely. We have disbanded our traditional teams. We are rebuilding from the ground up. The next time you hear from Smitten, we will be a different “product”, and we use that word loosely. Maybe not even an app. Whatever the future of dating looks like, we intend to be part of building it.
About Smitten Smitten is a dating app that makes dating more fun, safer and more engaging. Through games, quizzes and smart icebreakers, Smitten creates interaction even before the match, leading to more relevant matches and better conversations. The app is primarily aimed at Gen Z and Millennials and offers safe dating with BankID verification.
For press enquiries contact: marketing@smitten.fun
