A policy intervention that could improve mental and physical health, reduce healthcare costs, boost falling birth rates and even improve the economy? Sounds like something the Prime Minister should be interested in, right?
We give people support with parenting, help them to make healthy lifestyle changes and advice them on how to manage their finances, so imagine if governments could help create opportunities for people to boost the quality of their romantic lives.
Purely from a cost perspective, more relationships would be desirable too. Severe loneliness costs almost £10,000 per person per year, due to its combined impact on wellbeing, health, and work productivity.
Unlike most policy areas, there could actually be relatively simple solutions. In our digital world, dating apps would seem the most obvious place to start.
Though the dynamics don’t quite work the same, all that choice means that modern dating sometimes resembles just another consumer market – with all our hopeful profiles as competing products looking for a buyer’s attention. So perhaps the Government could deploy some of the same levers it uses elsewhere to ensure a fairer playing field for romantic consumers.
For example, the apps often lead to “doomswiping”: even though the probability of the next person being your match is extremely low, the cost of swiping is almost zero. So swiping in search of an even better option, instead of opting for the one in front of you, always seems worth the cost.
Instead of allowing users to swipe through endless potential matches, hoping to find the perfect person, it would be an illuminating experiment to see what happens if people are required to explore their existing matches before they can swipe again – creating more time for connections to develop.
Government or other public bodies could also play a greater role in creating offline space for individuals to pursue relationships.
In the way we have Family Hubs to support parents and children, why not Relationship Hubs? They could offer support for people already in relationships, providing counselling and “relationship health check-ups”, especially for those who struggle to access that type of support currently.
I looked for dating advice online - and got sucked into the toxic manosphere
Read MoreIn these days of financial deficit and “black holes” in public finance, it’s almost impossible that any of these policy flights of fancy would ever see the light of day – and maybe we would just want the Government to stick to sorting out potholes rather than finding us a partner in any case.
Perhaps one day alongside climate, health, education, and AI, our relationships – our friendships, family connections, community bonds as well as our love lives – might be recognised as one of the most important social issues of our time.
The views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author, and do not necessarily represent the position of BIT.
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