Tokyo's Government Is Building Its Own Dating App to Combat Falling Birthrates | Hacker News Reader

Tokyo's Government Is Building Its Own Dating App to Combat Falling Birthrates

time.com

60 pointsaheck114 comments

Why would anyone want to have kids today? Most couples in the western world can barely support themselves while getting into home ownership, let alone trying to support multiple kids and put them through college while saving for retirement. The amount of capacity left in life for good child rearing is minimal. Add to that the fact that it's looking increasingly unlikely that there'll be jobs for their children anyway given the way AI is going, and even if there were jobs, previous generations are leaving them a burning hellscape full of toxic forever chemicals and microplastics that the kids will need to clean up, and a surveillance advertising driven economy that's increasingly difficult to escape. Toxic social media driving toxic expectations etc. It just seems cruel bringing kids into a world like that.

> it's looking increasingly unlikely that there'll be jobs for their children anyway given the way AI is going

Unless there's a robot revolution, there will be jobs. AI is not going to farm, provide elder care, or do maintenance.

And that's assuming we get to AGI, and not get stuck on this LLM plateau.

Add to that our increasingly lonely lives and fraying communities mean much less of a support network. Parenting is also exhausting now that “go outside and play, come back for dinner” is impractical (for various reasons good or bad).

> “go outside and play, come back for dinner”

why is this impractical?

EDIT: I'm getting downvoted but I am seriously not sure. I don't have kids right now but its part of how I intend to raise them when I get them.

People who are misinformed by watching too much news will call the cops on kids without grownups near by. This is somewhat rare, but it feeds into a real culture of misinformation where parents think this happens enough to fear letting them roam.

The feedback loop self reinforces because of lack of education - many people don’t realize the more news they consume the less they know about the statistics on the ground.

Also, cars are more dangerous now than before for kids to get crushed by.

The rarity here cannot be overstated. I enjoy stories like this - in the same way someone who enjoys true crime doesn't actually support murder - and they're heavily overreportd but quite uncommon.

If you want to let your kids go out and play it's unlikely you'll have issue. I suspect for many it's just an excuse to plonk their kids in front of the iPad all day.

Screen time is also a symptom of a very different form of misinformation - complete lack of information.

The human body is so much healthier with sufficient exposure time to the outdoor environment. Sitting is long term pain.

If parents knew this more, they would pushback on screen time in the same way they don’t let their kids eat ice cream all day.

In the US it will be because of other people, who will call child protective services, who will then come and destroy the family.

This is very far removed from my experience growing up. How do kids even get to school? Can't they walk, cycle or take the bus (I assume that must be possible but they still have to get to the bus stop)?

My first experience of being able to do something on my own was walking to school. It's always the same way, so it must be possible, right? I think I must have been 6-7 years old?

It depends on the neighbourhood but at least when I was a kid in Stockton, California everyone in my school was driven, and that was the 90's.

So the school bus-system is not a major thing?

The bus driver is the guardian, the kids are not unescorted.

What's no longer a thing is the kids going any further than eyesight of their front door to a pickup location on their own. Their parent can see them at the corner of the block, or goes with them.

that's insane! Even if they are 12 or even 15? (I assume something around 16 is the legal age where you can then drive?) Or are we only talking small kids like 6? I assume the bus stop is only max 10 min away?

For the context, here in the UK the streets are full of children walking from and to school every day. And in germany there's the discussion about making the cities safe enough so that every 6 year old can walk to school. Are you really saying that 14 year old kids can not walk alone to a local bus stop nearby? Because you don't trust them to navigate a street on their own and need a guardian? Or was it implicitly about children around 6-8?

Tbh I really enjoyed my walks to school. These were my first little moments of independence, I could pause a little bit and enjoy the summer atmosphere or rush home when my mom cooked my favourite meal. Maybe a small detour to buy some sweets at a small corner shop if I saved some money.

It is insane I agree. And it's not 100%. There are obviously still a full spectrum of parenting styles so some kids still get a little independence. And I don't know at what ages most kids start finally getting a little. Maybe by 14 they are on their own, but even in that case remember they all have tracking devices now.

I just wanted to say they probably now have 24/7 GPS-enabled tracking devices on them :) [1] It seems so dystopian! And as if the whole world is extremely dangerous except your lawn, also at the same time there's zero trust in your kids and their friends.

[1] I seriously wonder about the legality. Don't kids have rights to? And some right to some privacy?

In the US even adults barely have any right to privacy. I'm horrified by the proliferation of facial recognition. Airline attendants are always shocked I don't want to smile for the camera. I'll happily use an old fashioned boarding pass...

It's very far from my experience too. But that was in the 70s & 80s, and in small town.

how can your local environment be so hostile, it just doesn't sound pleasant. It also seems to be quite isolating from your neighbours and local neighbourhood. It sounds like everything after your yard is death and children need to be driven in some safety-cage to the next appointment. Next up is giving them bullet-proof vests and a gps tracker.

This is America.

If someone lets their kids outside while not under direct supervision, there is a real risk of the government taking their kids away from them.

Just one example from the news https://reason.com/2022/12/08/emily-fields-pearsiburg-virgin...

I am not in the US. The original post is not even about the US?

Shocking. Is this really true? I grew up with my bicycle, which gave me the freedom to spend the summer holidays how I wanted. Visit friends, and when I got a little bit older cycle with them to a lake, a public swimming pool, get ice cream, play football etc. until the sun came down and I had to come home. Of course, I wasn't allowed to do things alone only with a group of known friends, they knew who I am spending time with and which friend I am visiting. And never to strange places only the familiar ones nearby.

My gf grew up in the city and grew up in her local neighbourhood and her local friends. The parks, playground and also the nearby ice-cream if its hot and sunny :)

Do they sit in their home playing video games all day or what?

There's a few things going on -

(Also, I am indeed American but have lived in Europe for the last 11 years. I moved from Ireland to the Netherlands a year ago so our kids could have more independence, though even here is imperfect).

For the US - and actually a good deal of Europe too - terrible urban and street (stroad, rather) design makes it dangerous and impractical to bike as a child. Having 3 inches of paint as the only protection against a Dodge Ram doign 50 mph isn't ideal.

Also, things are spread farther out compared to older city designs, and there are fewer kids, so within a 5 minute bike ride you'll have fewer friends.

And - this is something my mom tells me at least - two income households becoming the norm means you don't have that safety net of moms (it was almost always moms) with an eye out the window that you could run to in case somebody was badly hurt.

> For the US - and actually a good deal of Europe too - terrible urban and street (stroad, rather) design makes it dangerous and impractical to bike as a child.

Hmm, tbh. I would consider it impractical for a child then! Aren't they sort of trapped then? I grew up in the suburbs and then moved to the cities big and small and biking was always ok. I think it's generally easier in the city without adequate infrastructure as cars are not that fast but in the suburbs there's more room for infrastructure like bike-paths. How is it in the US? Or are the distances just too far (you can still cover a lot of distance in 20-30 min bike rides!)

> And - this is something my mom tells me at least - two income households becoming the norm means you don't have that safety net of moms (it was almost always moms) with an eye out the window that you could run to in case somebody was badly hurt.

Well, I think that depends on the age. The older you get the more I could do. When I am at a lake/public swimming pool etc. there's no mom nearby. It was a 20-40min bike ride! I think i could just gradually do more until I was 18 and could go everywhere anyway. And when I was young I was only allowed on a few spots nearby. There's a big difference between 8 and 12. But we were certainly allowed to go into parts of "our" forest, there were also trails for mountain bikes there.

BUT I still don't understand it! So, it's dangerous because you have a lot of (I am assuming higher-speed?) roads, so kids often can't bike. So I am assuming somebody has to drive somebody always somewhere. It really sounds like a full time job, I had sports and piano lessons and friends and from what I understand US kids do a lot of activities like this. My mom would constantly have to play taxi? But the amount of time this would take...I think this would be either straight up impossible or maybe only with a part time job where you do the logistics of moving children from school to friend, from friend to sports etc. afterwards. Tbh it also sounds like a really annoying job for the parents but you also write that two income households are becoming the norm. So how do they do it if there are other things in life then constantly revolving around your kids (which I think is too much btw)? The only solution I can think of is something like a day-care facility for kids I would consider too old. Or are kids often bound to their house except if there's a scheduled trip with one of the parents?

Are they really, really unable to do anything until they are 18 (or 16, idk when you can drive in the US)? I would not consider that a child, that is a toddler.

My understanding of growing up in the US is mainly based on watching some episodes stranger things :D They bike a lot in there! Is this a totally unrealistic picture (in case you've seen it)?

Oh, I just had another major question. My girlfriend was only raised by her mother as her dad passed away when she was young. What do you do in this situation? You can't drive your kids everywhere constantly as you're alone and also have to work. Right? Seriously, what do you do?

It only sounds possible if you have a stay at home dad/mom who's only constantly revolving around the children. That's okay if that's what you want but I think it's unhealthy for both and probably also unrealistic for many.

I really hope I get an answer I am genuinely interested!

Hi - glad you're interested! My email's in my bio if you want to drop me a line.

Yes, kids are effectively prisoners until they can drive.

Can I ask where you grew up (what country, or region, etc)?

That's really cool re: forest. We're near a nature preserve but I don't yet feel comfortable with my kids going on their own. When the 6 year old is 8 or 9 I might though. I see kids around 9 years old biking to school on their own here, but I live in Hilversum, which is on the crappier end of bike infra for the Netherlands.

And yes, it's an exhausting, soul destroying full time job (on top of your other full time job). It can be mom or dad playing taxi but usually it's mom. I've known wealthier parents who just got their kids Ubers too.

Stranger things is great, and one of the things that is remarked upon is how different the 80's were from now. This is discussed at https://www.freerangekids.com/why-its-hard-to-raise-your-kid... for instance.

Single parents (ones without a coparent, specifically) have it really, really, really hard.

Anyway you basically just described why having kids is so hard.

Drivers will kill them, mostly. Also meddling curtain twitchers reporting you to police and the lack of other kids near by.

but the threat of drivers mostly depends on the neighbourhood. The more walkable it is the less of a threat drivers are, right?

Indeed, but walkable neighbourhoods are hard to come by. Even Europe has plenty of car-focused design.

People are wealthier and healthier today than almost any other point in history.

Better times than now are a blip in the grand scheme of things.

We have a huge number of social ills that contribute towards peoples reasons for not wanting children, but wealth and physical health are not among them.

If anything, reality suggests the problem is in fact wealth. The poorest countries have the highest birth rates and throwing more money at this has produced quite literally zero success.

Wealthy countries pay women more to work and punish women financially if they have a baby due to the opportunity cost.

The truth is for me somewhere in the middle. Happiness and satisfaction are not absolute, they can exist only in relation to your surroundings. Thus younger people in the US might be objectively better off than people in say India, but that doesn't matter. Their surroundings are as the OP described and that dictates how they feel about the present and future day.

On physical health it's actually wrong for the US as people's physical health is deteriorating evident by the falling life expectancy.

But with all that said, the actual idea in Japan is for me pretty stupid, as I consider dating apps to be one of the reasons people are connecting less and less. The choice is too large, it's very superficial, most people want the "best" thus large number of people are out of luck.

If you are looking at "all of history", for most of history it was usual for one person in a couple to spend most of their time at home, which is very hard to do now while covering rent.

Yes, circumstances change over generations. However we still are wealthier and healthier than ever. If your goal is to raise a family, it's fairly easy in most first world countries to move to a quiet area, have kids and get a non career job. If you wish to "have your cake and eat it too", life is going to be harder because you made that choice.

Actually, for most of history it was common for everyone to simply WORK AT HOME, as farmers. And that was a job for whole family, including children as young as 6 years old.

In the old times, raising kids was cheaper and required much less care. From the moment a kid could walk, he would be helping around the farm. The clothes he would have would be one shirt which he'd inherit from his older sibling. The toys would be whatever is around the farm. Most kids would not go to school let alone attain some higher education. Nowadays, its completely different. As parents, you need to invest thousands upon thousands before your kid turns 18 and then hope that he will get somewhere in life and take care of you.

IMO, your generalizations are not fair. There is an inverse relationship between wealth and fertility, globally. https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2016/december/link... The article describes some possible reasons.

And how are we healthier? 42% of adults are obese, compared to 12% fifty years ago.

I like the analogy with the USAF and fighter jets. Every generation of fighter jet is more capable than the one before but also much more expensive per plane to purchase and operate, so they get fewer of them each time.

Not wealthier in every sense. House prices, and houses being really fundamental to our lives, going up due to modern factors are a real issue.

> previous generations are leaving them a burning hellscape full of toxic forever chemicals and microplastics that the kids will need to clean up

Please, folks, take a step back and realize that most of what you've read about this stuff in the pop media is based on extremely speculative data, usually from weak, observational studies, or small laboratory experiments in non-human animals. The threat to your life, individually, has been greatly exaggerated. You are far more likely to die of eating too much and getting too fat than whatever microplastics are supposedly doing to you.

I'm not saying that there aren't issues here, but as someone else on this thread already noted, we're living longer than ever before. To the extent that human lifespans have declined, it's largely due to the fact that we're succumbing to diseases of lifestyle that are entirely within our control as individuals.

Worry about that, not theoretical future concerns about chemicals.

On microplastics I agree, but on climate change the issue is almost reversed. We have tons of high profile research coming out all the time that even our worst case models were too optimistic and we are bound for a shitshow of unimaginable proportions. This shouldn't come as a surprise for people who know how the IPCC reports are created (sort of a least common denominator between science, politics and lobbyists). So every time they say official "worst case" model, that is the worst case that the fossil industry is willing to admit. And that is already pretty bad. What we're actually going to experience could very well amount to a civilisation-ending event. Especially if oceans keep acidifying, which is a highly overlooked doomsday gun and could not just end modern civilisation, but actually kill us and most other land based oxygen breathing creatures. We even know this has happened once already, most likely from a combination of impact events and volcanism. But today's CO2 emission rate is an order of magnitude greater than it was back then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extin...

The worst case used to be 6.5 degrees. The worst case has been revised down to ~4 degrees.

The ocean temperature data from the last year is suggesting that there are significant problems in the climate models and not in a happy direction. I try not to dwell on this subject, but I’m increasingly glad that I never wanted children.

You're missing the forest for the trees. The primary factor influencing warming is CO2 emissions. The rate of emissions is expected to peak in 2024. That's much better than earlier worst case models that were based on continually increasing emissions.

So yes, the models miscalculated some secondary factors. But the primary factor is still primary.

Why are emissions expected to peak in 2024? Are people going to fly or drive less miles? Are we going to live in smaller, more energy efficient houses? Are we going to consume less compute resources? I’m sure we will deploy more renewables; we have certainly seen impressive performance there, but it has supplemented rather than replaced carbon-based sources so far. I believe there are also a lot of new starts for natural gas power plants in the US to support power intensive AI needs. And coal use world wide is still quite high.

I do agree that it would be encouraging to see a decrease in emissions (though I suspect we may have already passed some points of no return), but we have not yet seen the peak and I do not understand why one would believe that next year will be better than this year. A solution will require actual collective action that has proven infeasible for my entire life.

Biggest impact is wind power replacing carbon sources. A close second is solar power. EV's are a distant but non negligible third.

https://climateanalytics.org/comment/will-2024-be-the-year-e...

It is certainly worth hoping for, but I will not believe it until I see it. Until now, we have remained on a dire course.

First time I hear that claim as well. The only "peak" I'm aware of is coal burning for electricity.

that is expected to go down going forward, but that's not peak CO2, as coal engines are just one source of CO2 and not even the biggest contributer.

Misinformation is big with everything related to climate change as usual, so I kinda doubt we're anything close to peak CO2, but I'll keep checking the global CO2 averages. Maybe it'll go down from 450 again. It'd be great if itc went back to 290 (thats what it was before the industrial revolution, supposedly)... But I'm not expecting to see any reduction within my lifetime

With China having brought 47.4 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power online in 2023, why is is expected to go down going forwards?

My understanding is that they may not exactly be baseload, but will run only some of the time. Not ideal, but better than the worst case.

To be clear, "peak" refers to the maximum output of CO2; it does not mean that CO2 levels will begin falling in the atmosphere, merely that the rate at which we add it to the atmosphere will begin to trend downwards instead of increasing (as it always has since the dawn of the industrial age). "Net zero" is when no more CO2 is added to the atmosphere and as far as I can tell is essentially science fiction at this point. Decreasing ppms of CO2 is beyond that even.

As I said, this is all rather hard to take when considered seriously which is probably one of the reasons for denial. Probably the only near-term effort that can buy time is increasing the reflectivity of the atmosphere to counteract the greenhouse effect; it does seem technically feasible and economical, but is pretty half-assed and has problems of its own - principally a termination shock if it is ever discontinued.

You can see it in the Mona Lea CO2 measurements. We've gone from steadily increasing increases to constant increases. Soon it will be increases that get smaller every year

While emissions are peaking, now we need enough clean energy to direct air capture all of the carbon released over the last 100+ years as well as that we continue to emit.

There is some hope, but success is not yet assured and there are lots of decisions and work remaining to succeed.

Exactly. There is lots of hard work remaining. Without hope nobody would be willing to put in the hard work.

The RPC8.5 scenario is still labelled "avoid at all costs" in the report, while research over the past two decades [1] suggests that this is the path we are actually on right now. Bear in mind that this is already a doomsday scenario, just one that even the fossil industry and politicians admit to. The real outcome is likely to be much worse.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7443890/https:/...

>You are far more likely to die of eating too much and getting too fat than whatever microplastics are supposedly doing to you.

Funny how you can imply that we are still in the dark about how microplastics and other toxins or chemicals (in our food or water supply, for instance) actually affect our health, and, at the same time, assert with such confidence that something else is more likely to kill you. You don't know how A is really affecting you, yet you're saying that surely B is affecting you to a greater degree than A? Are you incapable of seeing the incoherence and bias here?

>it's largely due to the fact that we're succumbing to diseases of lifestyle that are entirely within our control as individuals.

Yet another unfounded assertion to protect your dismissive standpoint. Man, I'm glad you decided against becoming a scientist, phew.

>folks, take a step back and realize...

>Worry about that, not...

No. The issues the user you replied to are legitimately concerning and I don't think it's reasonable to dismiss his worries, which many people share, especially through such an unscientific and biased way of thinking.

There is simply zero evidence that microplastics are killing people at higher rates than obesity. If they were, it would be very obvious in the data.

I agree you can worry about two or more things, but the delta in world quality 50 years ago vs. now is not tremendous and not obviously negative; microplastics play a very small part in it either way. If one shouldn’t bring kids into the world now one probably should also believe their own birth was a mistake.

> Why would anyone want to have kids today?

I'm gradually learning through experience and anecdotes that most women seem to have an innate biological drive to procreate, which is separate from sex drive. I think that's the main reason.

The drive to procreate is the sex drive, we only recently decided to decouple them in abstraction due to technology.

I'm not sure that's true; it's possible for a woman to desperately want a baby, but still have a low libido and have little interest in sex just for fun.

Low libido is evolutionarily informed to also signal that now is not the right time to procreate.

In this light, it’s not surprising that hormonal birth control, which tells the body it can’t have a baby now, very often reduces libido.

Even without female birth control pills, it can be the case.

Yes, but usually one baby is enough to satisfy that drive, which is not enough to keep the population from shrinking. And recently some women decide to have 0 babies, and settle for a dog or cat instead. I've heard them using terms like "dog-child" or "cat-child", or "cross-species family" :)

Not usually, sometimes. The amount of ‘usually’ depends on the amount of hormone alteration happening, naturally or unnaturally.

Often a higher libido will be presented until the ink is dry on the marriage certificate and the first child is born and then suddenly drop off. Many such cases.

Not just possible; I think it's common. Also looking at what women endure for IVF it's clear to me that the need to have a child to nurture is often extremely powerful.

Hunh, statistically, I seem to be wrong: more men than women want kids https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-you....

I'm surprised by that as well, though speaking as a man, I much prefer my part in the reproductive process; squeezing an infant's head out of any part of my body or getting gutted by a surgeon does not look enticing.

One interesting thing I learned though - when men think of children, they imagine them around four or five, but women tend to think of them around a year old (and again this tracks with my experience), which does make me think women "want babies".

If you think about it, there has never been a good time to have children. In 1920 I could’ve said why have kids, they might die from an infection. 1820s, famine or war etc.

Snap out of it. The standard of living has never been so high. It’s your attitude that’s toxic.

for a few reasons:children allow you to fulfill a whole new role in life, its a duty to pass on the gift of life, and family is important. people have lived through much worse

The world has never been safer and humanity has never been better equipped to support the survival of a child than now. I don't have an explanation for the phenomenon, but it's certainly not the horror reasons you mention.

Wealth and fertility have an inverse relationship. This is true worldwide, and through recent history (~50 years). Just one of many reasons, women are going to college and having careers at historical highs. And the same women are punished for having kids.

"This decreasing relationship between fertility and income is well known to economists and demographers alike. In addition, it holds true over time: Rich countries, such as the U.S., have experienced a remarkable decline in their fertility rate as they became rich. Also, the relationship holds at the individual level, as rich families tend to have fewer children than poor families." from: https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2016/december/link...

I think it's just as simple as when you're already poor, having children doesn't fundamentally change things. Children don't actually cost that much when you have nothing much to give them anyway, and quickly turn into free labour if anything. If you're very lucky, they can get a job in the city/abroad and send money home. But for generations, having children and having them continue much the same, generation after generation, is just how is always been. It's often also required by religions, because religions that encourage children grow, and so it's self-reinforcing.

The problem is in modern "wealthy" society, everyone is allowed to work (to be clear I'm not saying that's not a problem in itself), and the Red Queen effect means that within a couple of generations¹, most couples are both in full-time work just to afford rent and the "basics" of a modern lifestyle. Children are now a huge opportunity cost, one that might cost you your home. Then, because the couple would have prospects to offer the child, the common human instinct is to invest everything in them or their future, spurred on by the social expectations and the Childhood Industrial Complex. Vitamins and private healthcare into expensive high chairs, a "safe" car and a top-line car seat, toys, computers, clothes, experiences, holidays, housing near good schools, tutoring, a degree etc. Plus the fairly modern sentiment that you should spend as much time as possible with the child, which may inhibit large families even for those who can financially afford them. The expectations around what a "minimally non-negligent parent" must provide children are so high that many people think "I quite literally cannot be sure to provide that, so I should not have children". Of course in the background, "don't have children if you can't afford them" has been the tabloid "anti-scrounger" slogan for at least a generation now, and religious adherence is way down in wealthy societies.

It's a hell of a catch, as Heller would say. Be poor and offer your children almost nothing material in life, and so have them, or be rich and be unable to offer your children far more in an absolute sense than the poor person could, but still far below what you would want to, and so forgo them.

¹ After a couple of generations of taking up the slack in the middle classes (e.g. go-getter Yuppies giving their children unthinkably luxurious childhoods with their new dual incomes, plus the productivity revolution initially paying out as worker wages), the Millennial generation was the first to really notice en masse that they really could not provide to their children what their parents provided to them. Certainly I can't give my children what my parents gave me, and I'm in roughly the same income decile.

Nah, it's actually a blast. We had our first kids when we're legitimately poor. We're fairly well off now and have had a few more. It was just as fun then as it is now.

One's financial well being their childrens' happiness are not intrinsically linked. My oldest kids were just as happy as my youngest. They don't care if your rich or poor. They only care about how you treat them.

Check your outlook friend. There is plenty of bad stuff in the world, but it's mostly good. Go out and enjoy life.

Maybe a public service dating app makes sense. The alignment of incentives are all wrong for private dating apps. They obviously lose when you find someone and pair up so they're incentivised not to find a match.

Are there dating apps that work like recruitment, eg. it's free but you pay a fee when you get married or something like that?

I like the concept, but it seems impossible in practice. How on earth would the billing system work? If it's self-reporting, no one will report.

It's interesting how "honor system" can work for certain in-person businesses, but I don't think it could ever work for a dating app.

I've been thinking an escrow system could work. On signup, you pledge to donate to a charity when you leave. Candidates won't be able to get back their funds, they can only release them. Once they have a mate, their mate would make sure the money is released. The platform could take a cut to finance their operations.

The amount pledged and the charity could be public for extra virtue signaling.

Oh wow! That's brilliant! I think it could work.

RumpelApp asks for your first-born child should you successfully match.

This is commonly repeated but I don’t think it has any basis in reality. Dating apps compete. the one your friends tell you they met their partner is the one you sign up for.

>the one your friends tell you they met their partner is the one you sign up for

That's also survivorship bias. My friend met his GF at a sports-group. I've been going to that sports group for a year and didn't meet a GF. I met my ex-GF in a coffee shop. My friend has been going to that coffeeshop for a while and didn't meet a GF.

There's too much randomness in dating and variance between people, to draw conclusion that just because an app or social place/group worked for one person it will bring results to another.

There's no sure thing in dating apps, otherwise everyone would be on that one app and stop going out altogether if it were that easy to find a partner.

The competition is an illusion, match.com bought up all the popular apps.

At least here in the states they have all been bought up by

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match.com

Perhaps the government could directly incentivize dating apps to create “good” matches by including an optional field on marriage registrations indicating on which app, if any, the couple met. The government could then pay the companies directly a kind of bounty per couple (or tax credit or something).

Unlike other incentive systems, I feel like this one would be harder to abuse since there’s a fair amount of friction to getting married.

On the other hand a non-profit dating app could really change the landscape as all others are bought up by match Co and are all designed for profit not matching

I know that a government’s primary objective is to perpetuate itself and grow, but other than that, what is wrong with a declining population? Especially as young people concentrate in urban centres which remain dynamic. People often quote the need for workforce to maintain the extravagant lifestyles of the retirees, but they will not starve in any case, will they? And if everywhere has Japan’s birthbrate, you get to solve pollution emissions, housing crisis and other problems in one or two generations.

Nothing wrong with population decline. This is concern with the derivative of population decline.

We are about to live through an inverted black plague where the population goes down the rollercoaster, every industry is disrupted because of no labor force, BUT the vast majority of people left are old instead of young and fit (after the plague).

I’m surprised Hollywood hasn’t jumped at the opportunity to portray what’s about to happen.

We had children of men which I guess is a dramatisation of what is happening

It should be fine, everything I've seen write about it seems to say it's like a cliff or steep descent rather than a gentle decline.

Has the government ever just done some research and maybe...asked people why they're not having kids and then address the issues?

There is something about the way Japan governs that has issues, I think it's because the society is very hierarchical and those at the top never to consider those beneath them might actually have something to say.

I find it somewhat funny how there's sometimes these news about Japan trying to tackle the birth rate problem in various ways, yet remaining extremely conservative in the work culture. What good is the dating app if you have to stay at the office until 11pm every night because that's what your boss does?

Yeah, there is also a pretty large expectation on employees to participate in company sports teams events etc on the weekend.

This might be a case where government has better incentives to get it right than the private sector. Although obviously there are huge potential pitfalls as well

Give people 6 hour workday with mandatory no-overtime and the problem will fix itself. It’s not rocket science.

I think the crushing time commitment of Japanese professionals to their jobs is part of the problem. From my limited western understanding, after work, and socializing with your colleagues from work, there's very little time for Japanese couples to start a family.

In Japan? If you did that, the economy would immediately fall over. I don't think you're very well informed on this subject matter.

> I don't think you're very well informed on this subject matter.

I am, son. I studied Japanese language and culture and considered working there. I know that my suggestion is a fat chance but having people work less and be less obsessed with work is the only way.

Seems like the economy is going to fall over when they have no more workforce left :)

Initiatives like this haven’t seemed to work in Sweden, among other countries. I don’t know if any countries have successfully reversed a plummeting birth rate, but it doesn’t seem to be for lack of trying.

Maybe the reality is that, given the choice, most women don’t want to have more than one or two kids under any circumstances?

At which point does it make sense for the Japanese government to just start a baby production facility? Pay women to be artificially inseminated for the purpose of human generation. Feasible, yes, ethical and moral, questionable, but ..it might be scalable.

You didn't even need the women. Artificial wombs exist.

That's the plot of Brave New World right?

> reports that said the app will require a confirmation of identity, such as a driver’s license, your tax records to prove income and a signed form that says you are ready to get married.

Not sure why someone would sign up for a dating app that is this invasive

because it means you're going to get matched with people who are real, honest about their income and serious about marrying. If I was looking to date this is probably the only app I'd consider signing up for.

Not sure why the Tokyo Metropolitan Government would need that info to begin with. They're going to have most of that on file already.

I am genuinely curious of how they are going to design the matching system. Which features are going to be used to describe individuals? I feel like the government has access to many more data than a private company, and the temptation to tap into PII for that might be high.

Dating is so high stakes nobody will go with the flow because that's what the government wants. Employment is high stakes and already uneven opportunity enough (those that need assistance get the bottom of the barrel). Dating will be much worse than this.

Create more social clubs, promote hobbies etc. and ban phone use (some comedy clubs have you leave your phone at the door).

Or don’t. Have everyone upload every intimate detail into a government database. SMFH.

This is the way. Until we can grow people in vats, which is far superior.

Typical JP Gov bollocks. Instead of bloody dating up do actual things to support people with kdis

- support single parents, most kids of single parents are living in POVERTY - support free school lunch, free Kindergarten, etc - make companies pay people a decent amount of money so you don't have to have two people work forever so they can sort of afford one kid where most pay then goes into a Kindergarten so both can work, so they can pay ... - looking at the yen right now and how everything gets overlay expensive and how no company is really willing to raise wages ... yeah good luck with kids - stop building places that are smaller than the places build 30~40 years ago. The new apartment block in front of mine has everything so small, you can barely fit a family with one kid ... - support other contraception methods financial ... - perhaps stop having politicians in say that just constantly complain why women aren't a housewife like in the olden days

A dating up will fix nothing.

Would that more governments set up app development companies with broader remits under a PSB model to act as a break on enshitification.

Nothing sexier than the government telling you what to do. Maybe they should focus on helping people work less, so they have more time to… get bored, and find someone.

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