Young adults and a hookup culture

Or so goes the typical media narrative about college life today. In fact, what the data reveals is that, not only is dating alive and well, but modern students do not seem to be any more sexually active than students from previous generations. Advertisement In a new study published in the Journal of Sex Research , scientists at the University of Portland compared data from the General Social Survey at two different points in time: For each 8-year period, the researchers tabulated the sexual behaviors of all year-old adults who participated.

The Myths of Hookup Culture. PhD, associate professor of sociology at Occidental College and author of American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus, You can read her prose in Cosmopolitan, The Harvard Business Review, i-D, ISSUE, Marie Claire, BOMB, and Refinery 29 and her poetry in The Boston Review, The Colorado Review, and Nat.

More telling than the frequency of casual sex among youth is the attitude surrounding it. While they may long for true intimacy, the students craft excuses for their active negation of commitment. Conversely, some young women report that their engagement in hookup culture is founded in desire to avoid romantic attachment and belief that commitment could compromise professional opportunities. It might be a different situation if these students pursued casual sex after displaying emotional maturity, taking proper precautions and assuming responsibility for any negative consequences.

None of these indicators are present in hookup culture. Students instead deliberately avoid romantic relationships because they are terrified of becoming attached to other human beings. Maturity is completely absent from the dynamic. College men and women who have casual sex in this counterproductive fashion shelter themselves from meaningful connections in fear that the relationship could fail, leaving them with an emotional void.

Accompanying this attitude is a failure to recognize that vulnerability is inevitable of any significant bond. Relationships regularly fail, but it is a natural part of interpersonal development. This desperate evasion of companionship can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Believing that one can suddenly be prepared for a committed relationship or marriage after solely hooking up throughout college, graduate school and a few years of employment is unrealistic.