If dates are generally a prerequisite to relationships than the numbers issue tends to have a lot of influence (age does too).
My impression from living here isn't that it's people worried about their status, I think it's just that there aren't enough people - do you live in the bay area?
And my point is that there are enough people around that getting dates should not be a significant problem. I went out with about 25-30 people before finding my girlfriend; to get to that involved about 200 OKCupid messages. There were about 5 dates in the 3 weeks before and 3 weeks after I first met her.
