It’s 2025. You meet someone on a dating app and after a few exchanged messages, you decide to meet. A coffee date turns into a long conversation, and before you know it, you’re navigating the thrilling uncertainty of falling in love. Back then, dating often meant pursuing depth, building connections step by step, and dreaming about shared futures. Now, gone are those days of taking things slowly. The rules of engagement have shifted. Nano-ships, fleeting, surface-level connections, dominate the dating landscape. A swipe leads to a chat, a chat to a brief meet-up, and just like that, it’s over. In an age where everything moves at lightning speed, even relationships have become disposable.
Feeting, digital connections that lack any depth or longevity of traditional relationships are new dating trends likely to take over the dating scene in 2025.
Modern communication tools like social media, dating apps, texting, snapchatting have fostered an environment where people form quick, often surface-level relationships, referred to as ‘nano relationships’ or ‘nanoships’.
Nanoships come with no string attached which means commitment-phobics can now avoid the complexities of romance.
Nanoships have a remarkable ability to humble you, proving that the absolute bare minimum like a ‘good morning, beautiful’ text can somehow send daters into a euphoric frenzy. Truly, who needs effort when mediocrity reigns supreme?
Rules of a relationship
Nothing special, just superficial
Many youths believe that relationships have become superficial in recent years. Aarti Ray believes that the way people view relationships has changed. “People use relationships as some sorts of ego boost or to meet their selfish needs,” she says, “Everyone seems to be unbothered about anybody’s feelings, but their own.”
For Anjali Karki, the answer to this is both yes and no. She believes that the rise of dating apps and social media has created a culture of instant gratification. People do not shy away from making snap judgements based on appearance and profiles which creates a want for surface-level connection. She says, “The fast-paced nature of modern life leaves little room for the patience and effort required to brew deeper connections. But at the end of the day, we are emotional human beings so there always is a want and need for long-term connections and we eventually tilt toward that, it might be later than it used to be before but we always want deep connections.”
Sangharsha Ghimire is concerned about the way youths are defining relationships. He says that people today care more about how things look than how they feel. “I think we’ve lost patience,” he says.
Is a deeper connection possible?
Ray believes that the culture of endless swiping fuels judgements that are based on appearance or surface-level profiles, but there is always a desire for deeper connections. “Social media has created a sea of options, and the challenge is filtering through the noise and finding authenticity,” she says.
For Karki, it's all in the mindset. "The mindset of ‘If this doesn’t work out, there’s always someone else’ can hinder building meaningful relationships. However, it's always the deep connection we are looking for,” she says.
Ghimire wonders what generation he has become a part of. “They say ‘there are many fishes in the pond’, this generation seems afraid of commitments,” he says.
The real question, however, isn’t whether deeper connections are possible. It is whether we are willing to slow down, embrace vulnerability, and invest in them. The heart will indeed always yearn for intimacy, no matter how fast the world gets spinning.
So yes, nanoships will rule the waters of rapid modern dating, but there will always also be those who will seek to dive deeper, in search of something more profound, within a sea of fleeting interactions.
