ATLANTA - s4story -- NexSpark launched with matching built entirely on a validated personality assessment instead of a swipe interface. The launch comes amid what the U.S. Surgeon General's 2023 advisory called a loneliness epidemic. The advisory found that roughly half of American adults experience loneliness, with young adults ages 19 to 29 reporting it more than any other age group. A Forbes Health survey found that 78% of Gen Z dating app users report feeling burned out by the format.

The timing also lines up with a broader shift already underway in the dating app category. Bumble has said it plans to move away from its own swipe feature, and Match Group has reported declines in active users, as complaints about "swipe fatigue" grow.

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Every NexSpark member completes an assessment built on the Big Five personality model, a well-established framework in personality psychology, layered with custom compatibility scales developed specifically for NexSpark. The assessment doesn't rely on horoscopes, vibe-based quizzes, or a snap judgment on a photo. It's scored deterministically, not through opaque AI guesswork, into a personal archetype and compatibility report, which is then used to surface matches.

That scoring is reviewed by real human matchmakers. They evaluate compatibility signals from the assessment data, not photos, before a match reaches a member.

NexSpark powers both nexspark.com, for romantic matching, and nexspark.org ("Friends"), for platonic connection, from that same assessment. A single quiz can inform how a member connects with others, whether they're looking for a partner or a friend.

"People are tired of being reduced to a photo and a snap judgment," said Matthew Firth, founder of NexSpark. "We built NexSpark around real, validated psychological science, not horoscopes or guesswork, because compatibility, whether you're looking for a partner or a friend, starts with actually understanding who someone is, not how they look in five seconds."

NexSpark is live now at nexspark.com and nexspark.org.