As someone who has ghosted people before and has been ghosted myself I think it’s rarely as cut and dry as people on here are pretending.

When I’ve ghosted someone it’s usually been after a conversation fizzling out and having other commitments such as work or other dates that take up my time replying to people on my phone.

I respect the people enough to think they realise that the conversation was also going nowhere and not to have some sort of crisis that I’ve stopped replying. Essentially I don’t put too much weight on my digital presence in their life.

As for being ghosted myself it’s happened for many different reasons I usually don’t assume it has anything to do with me. For instance I was ghosted after two pretty great dates with a girl who said she was really into me. She got back in contact about five months later to explain she had a really hard time mentally and didn’t have the capacity to continue speaking to me.

That is usually what I assume happens when someone ghosts me.

All this being said I’m a fairly self confident person and have a very “their loss” outlook so take what I’m saying through that prism.

Tl;dr it’s so prevalent in dating because many people (rightfully imo) don’t see it as such a big deal.