Building for Closeness
On October 8, Hinge hosted Heads Up, bringing voices from across disciplines together to tackle the closeness crisis.
Founders, researchers, technologists, creators, and cultural leaders gathered in Hinge’s hometown of New York City to spend a day on one question: if technology has made us more connected than ever, why do we feel so alone? The conversations produced practical guidance for anyone building technology, from what to measure to what to leave unbuilt. Below are the principles that are co-created through the conversations, and we’ll keep adding resources to this page throughout October.
Download the guideTake It With You
The Heads Up Guide
In Case You Missed It
“Modern loneliness masks itself as hyperconnectivity. You can have a thousand virtual friends and no one to watch your dog. It’s less an absence of people and more an absence of depth. ”
Esther Perel
Psychotherapist & Relationship Expert
“According to the former U.S. Surgeon General, a lack of social connection raises the risk of an early death just as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. ”
Kahlil Greene
Gen Z Historian
“And while we may be more efficient than we were ten years ago, we're actually spending less time in person with other people. And we're also spending less time literally speaking, speaking out loud as a society.”
Jackie Jantos
CEO, Hinge
“I think we have held the moral bar for the leaders of some of our biggest, especially consumer technology companies, extremely low for far too long.”
Alphonzo 'Phonz' Terrell
Co-Founder and CEO, Spill
“Product design is inherently culture design.”
Sari Azout
Founder, Sublime
“... my hope is that when we do monetize, it will be freemium, not ads, because ads create a desire to addict, whereas freemium creates a desire to delight.”
Andy Dunn
Founder & CEO, Pie, and Co-Founder & Founding CEO, Bonobos
“Bring as much humanity into every part of the process, because people can feel it on the other side. Don't do an AI product just for the sake of using AI...”
Xavier 'X' Jernigan
Original Voice of DJ and Spotify Trends Expert
“...And so we had a really hard decision. We could take the money and be in business, or decline the money and risk not even existing in a couple of months... it was, for me an important lesson, where your guiding principles aren't just marketing fluff on a website. ”
Rana el Kaliouby
AI Scientist & Entrepreneur
“... We really care about what happens after people leave Hinge and go meet in real life. Our north star metric is great dates.”
Ben Celebicic
CPTO, Hinge
“AI isn’t magic. It’s math. It is data. If you want to interrogate the way AI represents a person, a topic, a culture, you have to interrogate the data. ”
Linda Dounia Rebeiz
Artist & Designer
“When we feel we are the only person going through what we are going through, it's one of the most vulnerable moments in your life.”
Saeed Jones
Poet & Podcaster
“I don't think it's necessarily that young people don't want to be online. I think they want to be online with dignity”
Trisha Prabhu
Founder & CEO, ReThink Citizens
“There are a million and a half New Yorkers who don't have broadband at home. So we've started to broadcast broadband from our 200 locations to create a free, basic utility level of broadband in the city.”
Tony Marx
President & CEO, New York Public Library
Principles to build on
Designing for Tomorrow
What we heard, distilled into key principles we should build around.
Build for depth
Build for depth
Modern loneliness can hide inside hyperconnectivity: hundreds of contacts, connections, or followers, and no one to show up when you need them most. Since depth comes from quality over quantity, any feature should help interactions be richer or move the connection forward. The one tradeoff widely discussed by builders is whether depth can scale.
Build a clear user path out of the product and into real life
Build a clear user path out of the product and into real life
A product designed for connection should help people reach a point where they can put it down. Measure success by the connection the product makes possible, including what happens after people leave. When people step away to spend time together, the product has fulfilled its purpose.
Let human needs guide AI’s role
Let human needs guide AI’s role
Start with the problem, then ask whether AI would be the right tool for addressing it. Use it to reduce burdens, protect people from harm, and help them find each other, while preserving the effort and judgment humans provide. Additionally, set a high bar before you ship AI-powered experiences, even when competitors are shipping fast. And when AI can do a task, ask whether it should.
Preserve the effort that fosters human connection
Preserve the effort that fosters human connection
Making something easier doesn’t always make it better for people. An awkward hello, an honest answer or the effort of showing up can be the beginning of closeness. When technology makes those moments easy to escape, it can remove opportunities to connect. Builders should remove unnecessary barriers and keep friction where effort leads to more meaningful interactions, presence, and trust. Builders acknowledge that you might lose users during sign-up for your platform, but the people who stay are there on purpose.
Make closeness a ritual
Make closeness a ritual
Closeness grows through repetition. Regular time together builds the trust to share honestly, listen deeply, and learn from people whose lives differ from our own. That practice strengthens how we navigate our lives, work with others, lead teams, and contribute to our communities. One of the easiest ways to start is creating a standing time and place to connect, whether it’s a weekly gathering, a shared meal or third spaces like public libraries. Make connection part of everyday life, with enough consistency to survive busy weeks and enough openness for relationships to deepen.
Give the people you serve a say in what you build
Give the people you serve a say in what you build
People should have meaningful power over the products that affect their lives. Involve them from the start, and give them a clear role in deciding what gets built, how it works, and whether it’s ready to launch. Prioritize people whose needs are most often overlooked or least supported as designing for them can make the experience better for everyone. Additionally, move beyond asking for feedback to sharing authority through product councils or seats on the board. Their participation should change decisions.
Commit to values you’ll uphold at a cost
Commit to values you’ll uphold at a cost
Values matter when they change decisions. Define the promises you’ll protect and the boundaries you won’t cross, even when doing so means losing revenue, turning down funding, or slowing growth. Write down what you won’t build, how you won’t use people’s data and which outcomes you won’t sacrifice. Use those commitments to evaluate every feature, partnership and funding offer, especially the attractive ones. Embed them in hiring, incentives, and decision-making so they endure beyond any one leader.
Make safety foundational
Make safety foundational
People need to feel safe to open up, participate and build trust. Design protections into the experience from the start, with appropriate verification, clear boundaries against harassment and controls over what people share and who can reach them. Ask the community what safety looks like for them. Involve your community and keep improving as their needs evolve. Uphold those protections even when they reduce sign-ups or slow growth. A community’s success depends on whether people feel secure enough to connect.
Measure success by how people’s lives improve
Measure success by how people’s lives improve
What you measure shapes what you build. Make human well-being and real-world outcomes the primary measures of success, such as meaningful relationships, a stronger sense of belonging, or feeling safer and understood. Outcomes take longer to show up than a click does, so judge them over quarters and years. People disagree on the best measure, but a number that only rises when people spend more time with you will steer every decision toward holding user attention.
Build for depth
Modern loneliness can hide inside hyperconnectivity: hundreds of contacts, connections, or followers, and no one to show up when you need them most. Since depth comes from quality over quantity, any feature should help interactions be richer or move the connection forward. The one tradeoff widely discussed by builders is whether depth can scale.
Build a clear user path out of the product and into real life
A product designed for connection should help people reach a point where they can put it down. Measure success by the connection the product makes possible, including what happens after people leave. When people step away to spend time together, the product has fulfilled its purpose.
Let human needs guide AI’s role
Start with the problem, then ask whether AI would be the right tool for addressing it. Use it to reduce burdens, protect people from harm, and help them find each other, while preserving the effort and judgment humans provide. Additionally, set a high bar before you ship AI-powered experiences, even when competitors are shipping fast. And when AI can do a task, ask whether it should.
Preserve the effort that fosters human connection
Making something easier doesn’t always make it better for people. An awkward hello, an honest answer or the effort of showing up can be the beginning of closeness. When technology makes those moments easy to escape, it can remove opportunities to connect. Builders should remove unnecessary barriers and keep friction where effort leads to more meaningful interactions, presence, and trust. Builders acknowledge that you might lose users during sign-up for your platform, but the people who stay are there on purpose.
Make closeness a ritual
Closeness grows through repetition. Regular time together builds the trust to share honestly, listen deeply, and learn from people whose lives differ from our own. That practice strengthens how we navigate our lives, work with others, lead teams, and contribute to our communities. One of the easiest ways to start is creating a standing time and place to connect, whether it’s a weekly gathering, a shared meal or third spaces like public libraries. Make connection part of everyday life, with enough consistency to survive busy weeks and enough openness for relationships to deepen.
Give the people you serve a say in what you build
People should have meaningful power over the products that affect their lives. Involve them from the start, and give them a clear role in deciding what gets built, how it works, and whether it’s ready to launch. Prioritize people whose needs are most often overlooked or least supported as designing for them can make the experience better for everyone. Additionally, move beyond asking for feedback to sharing authority through product councils or seats on the board. Their participation should change decisions.
Commit to values you’ll uphold at a cost
Values matter when they change decisions. Define the promises you’ll protect and the boundaries you won’t cross, even when doing so means losing revenue, turning down funding, or slowing growth. Write down what you won’t build, how you won’t use people’s data and which outcomes you won’t sacrifice. Use those commitments to evaluate every feature, partnership and funding offer, especially the attractive ones. Embed them in hiring, incentives, and decision-making so they endure beyond any one leader.
Make safety foundational
People need to feel safe to open up, participate and build trust. Design protections into the experience from the start, with appropriate verification, clear boundaries against harassment and controls over what people share and who can reach them. Ask the community what safety looks like for them. Involve your community and keep improving as their needs evolve. Uphold those protections even when they reduce sign-ups or slow growth. A community’s success depends on whether people feel secure enough to connect.
Measure success by how people’s lives improve
What you measure shapes what you build. Make human well-being and real-world outcomes the primary measures of success, such as meaningful relationships, a stronger sense of belonging, or feeling safer and understood. Outcomes take longer to show up than a click does, so judge them over quarters and years. People disagree on the best measure, but a number that only rises when people spend more time with you will steer every decision toward holding user attention.
Faces from Heads Up
Take a Look
Snapshots from the day, before the ideas became takeaways.
