Love Born of the Body, Love Sold in the Market

Instant love, online relationships, dating, live-in arrangements, intimate relationships, red flags, isolation, frustration, anxiety, depression, fake lifestyles, overexposure, breakups, and even breakup celebrations—these are some of the new-age buzzwords that today’s Indian youth, the Gen Z generation, are grappling with far more than with essential concerns like education, employment, or health. This is the phase of life where they should be building their futures, contributing to family, society, and the nation. Yet, the Gen Z generation is spending an average of 6.45 hours daily in front of TVs, laptops, desktops, and smartphones.

Today, Gen Z accounts for approximately 40% of India’s population. This generation has grown up with mobile phones, stood firm with YouTube, educated themselves through Google, and immersed their lives in the world of the Internet and social media: smartphones, YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Snapchat, Messenger, TikTok, Discord, and Facebook. So entangled is their existence in screens that they are often referred to as the “Screen Age.” Viral trends dictate their daily lives.

Instead of pursuing stable careers and jobs, many dream of becoming freelancers, YouTubers, content creators, and Instagram influencers. Having lived so much of their lives in the virtual world, many of them are almost oblivious to the real world’s hardships and challenges. As a result, expecting them to provide solutions to real-world issues seems futile.

The disappearance of social policing and the rise of nuclear families over joint families have diminished their ability to coexist and tolerate others. Ironically, even as this generation’s capacity for endurance has declined, their hunger for love has grown. But this love is primarily physical. For them, love is no longer about devotion—it’s about attraction and possession.

Yet they struggle to answer an important question: after “possessing” someone, how will they sustain a relationship that demands patience and compromise—qualities that have been passed down for generations? The absence of such tolerance explains why many who live together for years cannot sustain their marriages once they finally wed.

In a country where the overall divorce rate remains just 1%, data from one dating app shows that among these younger generations in urban India, the divorce rate has soared to 28%. We are now only 12% behind the United States, where divorce rates have long plateaued. In India, however, this rapid rise suggests that we may soon surpass even America—at least in the cities.

This confrontation with modern buzzwords is not merely a consequence of the Screen Age; rather, it is the condition created by it. This generation refuses to tolerate anyone. They are accustomed to being self-absorbed and self-centered—to a degree where there’s no room for anyone else. While they may demand a partner for sex, a maid for cooking, a priest for rituals—everything must be on their terms. Even parents are now forced to live according to their children’s conditions.

They live only for the present. They place no faith in the future and refuse to learn from the past. This Gen Z generation even avoids standing by their own decisions, whether right or wrong. Their existence depends not on relationships, but on self-esteem and personal confidence.

Due to all of this, once they enter marriage, they soon begin to find many aspects of it undesirable. Statistics from women’s police stations reveal that nearly 60% of divorce cases stem from love marriages. This too is revealing: while 90% of marriages were arranged as recently as 2015, by 2022, that number has dropped to 44%.

Frankly, I fail to see the connection between love, marriage, and divorce. When I hear such stories, it seems as if all three were fake—the lovers merely performing roles, reducing life itself to a three-hour movie script.

In India, sex has long been tied to religious and moral frameworks. But for this generation, sex has become a form of entertainment, a commodity. Like all entertainment, it has an expiry date. Like all commodities, it has an opportunity cost. Even for individuals, the pleasure of entertainment comes with a personal time limit. Once that limit is reached, dissatisfaction sets in. Thus begins the search for someone new on social media—or the desire to reconnect with someone from the past.

For them, love and breakups are never the final chapter of life. Instead, each breakup is simply the beginning of a new journey of self-realization, life philosophy, and supposed maturity. Breakups have now reached even the lower-income groups, rural areas, and small towns.

These problems afflict not just one gender, but both men and women. Women who once suffered miserable married lives now enjoy newfound freedom thanks to modern conveniences. However, this freedom should not be about taking advantage of opportunities but about finding release from pain. The pursuit of personal gain is what is causing the institution of family and marriage to crumble.

According to some data, 81% of women say they feel comfortable living alone, while 25% of men state they don’t want to marry at all. Parents no longer have the courage to challenge these trends. This generation has severed its relationship with society itself. Their true society exists only in the virtual world, and that virtual world is indifferent to reality.

In India, traditional gurukuls and schools were never just centers of academic learning. They taught far more than weapons or scriptures—they trained students in the art of navigating life’s unresolved mysteries. That is why disciplines like literature, psychology, philosophy, chemistry, physics, mathematics, astrology, astronomy, and environmental studies were taught not merely as subjects, but as life skills.

Today, when families and society feel helpless in addressing Gen Z’s challenges, some of our educational institutions have begun to step forward. Delhi University, one of India’s premier institutions, has launched unique courses for Gen Z to help them deal with issues like love, breakups, and red flags in relationships.

These new courses—Negotiating Intimate Relationships, Media Psychology, and Psychology of Adjustment—are being run by the university’s psychology department and began in the 2025–2026 academic session. Any student who has completed Class XII, regardless of stream, may enroll. These are 4-credit general elective courses that include tutorials and group discussions where students can share experiences and learn from each other about violent relationships, dating apps, romantic ideals, and the influence of social media. They will even use tools like Sternberg’s Love Scale to assess their own experiences.

But the way this problem is spreading, one university’s efforts will not suffice. Many more institutions will need to step up and take responsibility.

(The author is a journalist.)