Introduction 

My name is Luna Greene and as a Junior, having spent three years at this school I’ve seen my fair share of high school relationships; the good, the bad, and the “I told you so”, but I’ve never experienced one. Namely, because of my maturity/self-awareness and orientation on the Aro/Ace spectrum, I never thought being in a relationship while in high school was a good idea. As such, I have been relegated to watching them from the outside. But I’ve always wondered what makes up a romantic relationship, I knew it had to have the same foundations as friendship with communication and such but I wanted to know what it was to other Gen Z.

My name is Rue Ward. I’m a senior and in all four of my years being here, I haven’t been in a single romantic relationship. Not that I mind of course. I also identify on the aromantic/asexual spectrum which means that I feel little to no romantic/sexual desire. All my life, I’ve been indifferent to crushes in school and boy talk. Anywho! On Valentine’s Day, what do I see? The heterosexuals were fighting online again. People talking about begging their partners for “basic” things like flowers or chocolate. This had me thinking, in the context of Genz, how do we feel about dating, romance and the lovey-dovey nonsense?

Data

Gender and Grade

Due to our flawed data collection method, the data is a little skewed. The majority of our data set came from cisgender senior girls. We know this statistic because we went through the gender and grade results, picking out all of the repeating ID numbers. There was probably a better way to do this but we’re silly and love taking the long road to get somewhere. A few notable data points is that the only two cisgender boys were both juniors. We had one 11th-grade non-binary student and a 12th-grade non-binary student. From the data we collected we were able to note all but one of our participants (~95%) were single/not currently in a relationship. 

Ideal Gifts 

But they still held opinions on thinking done in a relationship. We asked participants about aspects of relationships and what they expect. The first is what gift items they like to give and receive. We gave them six options: flowers, snacks/food, clothes, shoes, jewelry, hobby items, and 3 responses to the options: yes, no, depending on a section to provide a why/reasoning to their answer. The most liked options for gifts were flowers (79%) and snacks (95%), while the least liked were clothes (32%) and shoes (26%). 

Our participants were able to give us a reasoning behind their choices and this skew towards smaller items. First common answer was money, “I wouldn’t want them to spend a lot of money”, most of our participants showed concern over finances and an aver

sion to costliness. Second, being that shopping for bigger items like clothing and shoes is harder to do due to factors more than whether a person likes it or not (is it their size? Is it comfortable? Does it fit their lifestyle? Do they already have this in their closet?). Thirdly, smaller gifts are easier to make personalized, like getting jewelry with your initials or getting your favorite food is easier than tailoring a garment to your size, tastes, and sensory preferences. But that’s not to say there weren’t other participants who answered in favor of the larger items. Their reasons were that “Roses…die quickly” things like clothes, shoes, and jewelry are longer-lasting and can accrue more sentimental value as time goes on. And if your partner does go through the effort to get the right ones, clothing, shoes, and jewelry are “very heartfelt gifts.” It seems Gen Z is very financially aware and prefers the experience over the materials, but things that show effort and care are also appreciated.

For the ideal partner section, we chose common traits that people would like to see in their partners. Humorous, attractiveness, intelligence, stylishness, independence, authenticity, emotional maturity, having empathy, being inspirational, vulnerability, and having similar views. We assumed that the overall turnout of the preferences would be positive but no, of course it can’t be easy for us. 

The choices with the most negative responses were having a partner that is stylish, inspirational, and vulnerable. Yikes! Each response had two negatives out of the nineteen people we surveyed. Something notable we found was th

at one person answered that their ideal partner isn’t attractive. Another answered that they don’t want their ideal partner to have similar views as them. A responder had this to day: “I would feel most comfortable around someone I can truly be myself with, who would take care of me when I need it, but I would also like to be challenged and have interesting conversations.” Another responder wrote this response to justify their answers. “I can’t be with someone who’s straight up dumb, I need someone smart.” Rue completely agrees. They said that they’d switch the dumb with purposely ignorance and the smart with open minded thought.

What’s next? Comparisons! And the crowd goes wild! We’ll compare our answers. Starting with Luna’s answer for this question. They only choose depends on inspirational and stylish, which is reasonable. Everything else was a yes. Rue also chose yes for everything but they chose depends for humorous and stylish. Seems like we both agreed that you don’t have to be stylish to be loved. Take notes people! 

What does your ideal date look like and where is it?

For the ideal date we proposed ten options to understand our responders. We asked if their ideal date was loud, chill, productive, relaxing, expensive, low cost, adventurous, local, elegant or casual. That’s quite the list, no? Just like the last response we were expecting an overall positive response for some, if not most answers. These are their stories (Iykyk this reference).

Overwhelmingly, the most negative answers were the loud, productive and expensive responses. Why wouldn’t you want a study date or library date is beyond us. Everything else is actually pretty mixed. If expensive was overwhelmingly negative then why isn’t low cost overwhelmingly positive? The only mostly positive question was the chill one! Let’s see some of these replies as to why. “We are all broke! Even to get coffee or boba I would love it!!” Couldn’t have said it better ourselves! “I like a chill environment, but if the person has money and we go to like mcdonalds or something I’m gonna side eye them a lil bit.” Honestly! You say we’re going on a date and you bring me to McDonald’s and get me chicken nuggets? One of us is unemployed—and it’s not you! What does that say about you?

Conclusion

In conclusion, according to our data we’ve found that Gen Z is very practical and money conscious. They seem to prefer low-cost and low-effort approaches to dating. This seems to be largely due to the fact that they are still teenagers and as such not majorly employed yet. They don’t often have the money to spend on expensive items or dates. They value the thought that goes into a gift, not how much it costs. They also value the qualities a person has over just their looks, wanting intelligence over beauty, so as to not be intellectually stunted.