Run Game The game

How TikTok changed dating advice

5 min read

Dating advice used to arrive in books, seminars and forum threads. Much of it now also arrives as short video clips, often from people you've never met, surfaced by a recommendation algorithm. Here's what's documented about that shift, what people say it gets right, and what they push back on.

The scale

Pew Research Center reports that 37% of U.S. adults said they ever use TikTok in 2025, up from 21% in 2021. Among adults under 30 the figure was 63%. The 2025 number comes from a survey Pew ran between February 5 and June 18, 2025.

Pew's figures cover all TikTok use, not dating content specifically. They show a large audience, with a younger skew. That's a fact about who's on the app. It isn't a measure of whether the advice works.

New words, fast

The clearest effect is vocabulary. YPulse, a youth-market research firm, wrote in February 2023 that Gen Z on TikTok had developed its own dating vocabulary. It named "soft launching" (posting a partner online without any real identifiers of who they are) as the new term, and mentioned "red flag," "green flag," "situationship" and "shooting your shot" as ones readers may have heard.

Then there's rizz. Oxford University Press named it the 2023 Word of the Year on December 4, 2023. Oxford defines it as "style, charm, or attractiveness; the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner," and says it's believed to be a clipped form of "charisma." Oxford also says the word rose in popularity on TikTok, where the hashtag drew billions of views, and it notes that the streamer Kai Cenat is widely credited online with popularizing it. We cover the word's path in where the word rizz came from and the rest of the slang in modern dating terms.

Advice in short clips

Coaches and ordinary creators both post dating tips as short videos. This page found no data on how many or how they perform. What can be said about the format is structural: a short clip fits one idea, such as a text to send, a sign to watch for or a first-date question, and leaves little room for "it depends."

That cuts both ways. Short clips are quick to watch and easy to try, and a single tip without context can be applied to the wrong situation. Longer formats still exist: if you want to compare, the best pickup and dating YouTube channels lists creators who talk for ten minutes or an hour.

Street rizz and filmed approaches

Pickup content had its own earlier video era. Filmed approaches, often called infield videos, were a staple of YouTube long before TikTok. Short clips of strangers being approached on the street are the TikTok version, and a question that comes up about them is how much is spontaneous. Infield videos explained covers what that footage shows and leaves out, and is street rizz real or staged? looks at the question directly.

Dates as content

Another change: people film or narrate their own dates. A TODAY report from April 2023 found the #Dating hashtag had more than 65 million views at that point, covering advice, outfit help and post-date recaps. It profiled creators. Liz Mina, a Los Angeles creator, told TODAY she posts about 12 videos a week, about 5% of them dating recaps, and that her goal is to help women feel confident about dating.

The same report recorded downsides that people described. Licensed therapist Janika Veasley told TODAY that if a date is recorded, trust is damaged from the start, and that posting about dates can reflect a need for validation or attention more than an effort to build a connection. Emily Parris, a Denver creator, said the comments changed how she saw herself and her dates. She deleted her roughly 400 dating videos in December 2022, and TODAY notes she also cited her job. TODAY also noted that some content is recorded without the other person's permission.

What the evidence doesn't say

The sources above describe trends, usage and what individual people report. They don't measure whether watching dating TikTok changes who gets dates, how long relationships last, or how anxious viewers feel. If someone tells you it definitely helps or definitely hurts, they're going beyond what these sources show.

What is observable: the clips are quick to watch, and anyone with a phone can post one. A common rule of thumb is to check who's talking before you act on a tip, which holds for dating advice from any decade. If you want the longer arc, from pickup lines to authenticity traces how the advice itself changed.

What to do next

Treat short-form advice as a source of things to test, not rules. Here's a way to do that.

  1. Pick one clip a week. Choose a single tip you could try within seven days, such as a specific first-date question or a way to end a chat.
  2. Check the source. Look at who's giving it: their background, whether they sell something, and whether they say who it's for. Advice for one situation often doesn't carry over.
  3. Run it three times. One try tells you very little. Use the tip in three real conversations, then compare how each went.
  4. Write down what happened. Note the line, the setting and the response in two sentences. Notes beat memory after a nervous night.
  5. Cut the ones that feel fake. If a line only works when you say it in someone else's voice, rewrite it in yours or drop it.
  6. Keep a fixed time for scrolling. Set a limit, say 20 minutes, so the watching doesn't replace the doing.
  7. Skip filming other people. If you record a date or approach, ask first. Without a yes, don't post it.

Run Game's forum has a Field reports topic with a short template: where, what happened, what worked, and what you'd do differently. It's a useful place to test a tip you saw online against what happened when you tried it. Open Run Game to log the attempt.

Sources