This Valentine’s Day, Harvard undergraduates received their results from Datamatch, a digital matchmaking algorithm which connects students based on compatibility. According to The Harvard Crimson, Datamatch had conducted a survey which covered “everything from their roommates’ romantic lives to their first Wordle guesses in an attempt to match them with their soulmates, platonic or otherwise.” The popularity of Datamatch on campus – nearly 4,500 undergraduates participated this year – reveals students’ perennial desire for companionship. While some of these students may be hoping for a night of fun, others may be hoping for “the One.” But searching for “the One” on the basis of compatibility might not be a perfect dating strategy, as philosophy professor Anastasia Berg and The Point editor Rachel Wiseman explain in their Atlantic piece the “The Paradox of Slow Love.” This “slow love,” characteristic of Gen Z’s passive approach to relationships, lacks the direction which marriage as an end goal provides.

This year’s State of Our Unions report from the National Marriage Project and the Wheatley Institution asks, “is marrying later always better?” Contesting the long-held assumption that young marriages are always doomed to failure, the authors set out to “build a case for greater cultural acceptance” of those who marry in their early twenties in what are known as “cornerstone” marriages, which begin prior to the establishment of careers and homes. Advocates for marriage as traditionally understood will find evidence that cornerstone marriages are comparable to “capstone” marriages in terms of quality and stability. They will also be happy to learn that today’s cornerstone marriages are not as risky, and perhaps even more beneficial to society, than they may have been in previous generations.