新加坡正呼吁年轻的公职人员信任政府，相信政府能为他们找到合适的伴侣。
Singapore is asking its young government workers to trust the state to find them love matches.
“FirstDate”是由新加坡政府打造的一款约会平台，目前正处于试点阶段。在亚洲各国生育率持续走低的背景下，该平台是众多由政府主导的婚恋服务项目中的最新一例。
FirstDate, a government-built dating platform being piloted in Singapore, is the latest in a slew of state-backed matchmaking initiatives against the backdrop of Asia's persistently low fertility rates.
此前，日本和韩国也分别于2024年推出了由政府出面运营的婚恋服务：日本推出了基于人工智能的约会应用“Tokyo Enmusubi”，韩国则推出了“Seoulting”。
It follows Japan's AI-powered dating app Tokyo Enmusubi and South Korea's Seoulting, programs launched by the Tokyo and Seoul governments in 2024.
这些举措的出台正值亚洲各国面临日益严峻的人口危机之际。根据各国官方数据，韩国的女性人均生育率仅为0.80，新加坡为0.87，日本为1.14——这一数值均处于世界最低水平，远远低于2.1的人口更替水平。
The experiments emerge amid a rising demographic crisis — official government data put the total fertility rate at 0.80 children per woman in South Korea, 0.87 in Singapore and 1.14 in Japan — among the lowest in the world and far below the replacement level of 2.1.
政府介入如此私密的婚恋领域引发了社交平台用户的质疑与调侃，不少人称此类举措“充满反乌托邦色彩”。一位Reddit用户在讨论该平台时写道：“终于有政府分配的配偶了。”
Government intervention in a field as personal as romance has prompted skepticism and jokes among social-media users, some of whom describe the initiative as "dystopian." "Finally, state-assigned spouses," one Reddit user wrote in a discussion of the platform.
不过专家指出，在某些方面，新加坡的这项婚恋服务或许比传统的约会应用更具优势。
But the Asian city-state's matchmaking service may have conventional dating apps beat on certain fronts, experts said.
由政府审核的交友群体：政府主导的婚恋服务的一大潜在优势在于，政府可要求参与者提供官方记录作为加入项目的必要条件。但代价则是参与者必须将自己的敏感个人信息及婚恋相关资料交由政府保管。
State-verified dating pool One potential advantage of state-backed matchmaking is the government's ability to make verification against official records a condition for entry into the program. The trade-off: participants must entrust sensitive personal and dating information to the state.
使用“FirstDate”平台时，参与者需通过新加坡的国家级数字身份认证系统“Singpass”来验证自己的身份、年龄及婚姻状况。
FirstDate requires participants to using Singpass, Singapore's national digital identity system, to verify participants' identities, ages and legal marital status.
申请加入“Seoulting”的用户则需提供在首尔居住的证明、婚姻状况证明以及经济活动证明，可接受的证明材料包括就业证明、企业注册记录或收入证明等。
Seoulting applicants must provide proof of Seoul residency, marital status and economic activity. Accepted documents include employment certificates, business-registration records or income statements.
日本的审核流程更为严格。“Tokyo Enmusubi”的申请人除需提供带有照片的身份证件、收入证明及单身证明外，还必须完成一次线上面试。
Tokyo's screening goes further. Tokyo Enmusubi applicants must complete an online interview, on top of photo identification, proof of income and single status.
模式设计：像Bumble这样的商业约会平台通过订阅服务及付费功能来获取收入，因此它们有动力吸引并留住付费用户。
Model design Commercial dating platforms such as Bumble generate revenue through subscriptions and paid features, giving them a financial interest in attracting, converting and retaining paying users.
FirstDate既不提供订阅服务，也不推出任何付费功能；GovTech方面也承诺不会将用户数据用于商业变现。
FirstDate advertises neither subscriptions nor paid features, and GovTech says users' data will not be monetized.
该平台每次仅为用户推荐一位匹配对象，双方各有72小时的时间来决定是否建立联系。
It also presents one match per cycle, giving both participants 72 hours to decide whether to connect.
新加坡管理大学心理学教授诺曼·李博士指出：“约会应用往往倾向于向用户提供海量的选择。”他补充道，限制选择数量能促使用户更认真地对待每一次配对机会，从而缓解“选择困难症”。“当感觉自己有无限的选择时，反而很难下定决心选择某个人。”
"Dating apps are incentivized to provide people with tons and tons more choices," said Dr. Norman Li, a professor of psychology at Singapore Management University. Restricting those choices could encourage users to consider each introduction more seriously and reduce "choice paralysis," he added. "It's hard to settle on anybody when you feel like you have unlimited choices."
显性偏好与隐性偏好：FirstDate运用盖尔-沙普利稳定婚姻算法，依据用户填写的显性偏好来进行配对。
Stated vs revealed preferences FirstDate uses the Gale-Shapley Stable Marriage algorithm to pair participants using their stated preferences.
不过，新加坡国立大学商学院院长张武良博士指出，算法的效果完全取决于输入数据的质量。FirstDate的偏好数据主要来源于用户填写的问卷；相比之下，传统约会平台则能通过分析用户的浏览、选择或拒绝行为来推断其“隐性偏好”——即用户口头描述的理想伴侣特征与实际吸引他们的特质之间可能存在差异。
But the algorithm's output is only as useful as the preferences fed into it, said Dr. Teo Chung Piaw, Dean of the National University of Singapore Business School. FirstDate primarily derives those preferences from questionnaires. Conventional dating platforms, by comparison, can also learn from users' behavior — such as which profiles they view, select or reject — to estimate what economists call "revealed preferences" where users may describe an ideal partner type, but actually be drawn to different characteristics.
张武良表示：“FirstDate或许能促成更多契合度较高的配对，但关键问题在于：通过问卷获取的显性偏好能否比传统约会应用所捕捉到的隐性偏好更准确地预测人际间的契合程度。”
"FirstDate could plausibly produce more compatible matches," Teo said, but the key question is "whether stated preferences estimated from the questionnaire predict real interpersonal compatibility better than the revealed-preference signals generated by conventional dating apps."
这种算法并非政府婚恋服务所独有：Hinge平台早在2018年就引入了改良版算法，用于生成“最契合人选”推荐。
The algorithm is not unique to government matchmaking: Hinge introduced a modified version for its "Most Compatible" recommendations in 2018.
谈及与私营婚恋应用的关系，Coffee Meets Bagel Worldwide的首席执行官沈佳表示，她并不将其视为“竞争对手，而视作共同努力的一部分”。Hinge与Bumble则尚未对CNBC的置评请求作出回应。
In terms of relationships to private-sector dating apps, Shn Juay, CEO of Coffee Meets Bagel Worldwide, said that she doesn't see it "as competition so much as part of a shared effort." Hinge and Bumble did not immediately respond to CNBC's requests for comment.
婚恋配对的作用毕竟有限。FirstDate并非新加坡首次推出的政府扶持型婚恋服务。早在1984年，新加坡政府便设立了社会发展局，通过举办社交活动与联谊会来鼓励受过高等教育的单身人士步入婚姻殿堂。
Matchmaking only goes so far FirstDate is not Singapore's first foray into state-supported matchmaking. The government established the Social Development Unit in 1984 to encourage marriage among university-educated singles through social events and mixers.
为应对人口结构方面的挑战，新加坡还在探索其他举措：今年8月，政府加大了对家庭的财政补贴与育儿支持力度，旨在减轻养育子女带来的经济负担——这一负担被视为阻碍当地家庭扩大家族规模的主要因素之一。
Singapore is also looking at other ways to tackle its demographic challenges, expanding financial and childcare support for families in August in a bid to reduce the economic costs of having children, which are seen as one of the major deterrents to expanding families in the city-state.
即便政府主导的婚恋服务能促成更多情侣牵手，它也仅能解决生育率下降的部分问题。经合组织针对亚太地区生育趋势的研究指出，住房与育儿成本、经济与就业市场的不确定性、工作与家庭生活的难以兼顾，以及社会观念的转变，才是导致生育率下降的主要障碍。
Even if state-backed services produce more relationships, matchmaking addresses only one part of the fertility decline: an OECD review of fertility trends across Asia and the Pacific pointed to housing and child-rearing costs, financial and labor-market insecurity, difficulties reconciling work and family life, and changing social attitudes, as key obstacles.
“要想彻底扭转这一趋势并永久解决该问题，我持更为悲观的态度，”李女士说道。
"To completely reverse this trend and permanently fix this problem, I'm much more pessimistic," Li said.
不过，东京与首尔的早期实践表明，政府支持的婚恋服务确实能取得一定成效。
Early results from Tokyo and Seoul nevertheless suggest that state-backed matchmaking can have some success.
截至8月底，“东京Enmusubi”平台的注册用户已接近1.7万人。据东京市政府数据，该平台已促成835对情侣确立“认真交往关系”，另有316对最终步入婚姻殿堂。
As of the end of August, Tokyo Enmusubi had around 17,000ed members. Tokyo government data showed that the service had produced 835 couples who entered "serious relationships" and 316 marriages.
首尔推出的“Seoulting”项目在举办的前五场相亲活动中便吸引了13,854人报名，最终有126对男女成功配对。据首尔市政府介绍，首对通过该项目相识并公开身份的情侣预计将于12月结婚。
Seoulting’s first five matchmaking events drew 13,854 applications and produced 126 mutually selected pairs. The first couple publicly known to have met through the program is slated to marry in December, according to the Seoul Metropolitan Government.
通过该计划成功配对的情侣可获得后续约会的优惠券，还能参与首尔各节日相关的活动。此外，他们还能加入线上及线下社群，与其他参与者保持联系。
Couples who match through the program are offered vouchers for subsequent dates, access to follow-up activities tied to festivals around Seoul, as well as an online and offline community where participants can stay connected.
目前，“FirstDate”项目仅面向年龄在21至35岁、且已通过Singpass身份验证的公务员开放，本次试点的申请截止日期为10月5日。关于是否向更广泛人群开放，目前尚无相关公告。——CNBC的Jenny Lee对本文亦有贡献。
FirstDate is currently limited to Singpass-verified public officers aged 21 to 35, with applications for its current pilot closing on Oct. 5. Broader access has not been announced. – CNBC's Jenny Lee contributed to this story.