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A hookup culture is a culture in which hookups, casual sexual encounters focused on physical pleasure without necessarily including emotional bonding, is accepted and encouraged. One review of studies has found that hookup culture "has taken root within the sociocultural milieu of adolescents, emerging adults, and men and women throughout the Western world." In particular, some see hookups as "especially characteristic of late adolescent Western college students." Others see them only as characteristic of American college culture.

Many studies have argued that the emergence of hookup culture may lead to loneliness, and social and emotional problems for youths who participate in it. The definition of what constitutes a hookup is often purposely ambiguous, and what youths consider hookups may not necessarily include actual sexual activity. Casual sex is differentiated from a hookup in that hookups do not necessarily involve sexual intercourse.

History

The rise of hookups, a form of casual sex, has been described by evolutionary biologist Justin Garcia and others as a "cultural revolution" that had its beginnings in the 1920s. Technological advancements such as the automobile and movie theaters brought young couples out of their parents' homes, and out from their watchful eyes, giving them more freedom and more opportunity for sexual activity. Sociologist Mark Regnerus agrees, saying that during that time more people began having sex outside of marriage, though it was usually with their future spouse.

With the loosening sexual morals that came with sexual revolution in the 1960s, sex became uncoupled from relationships and non-marital sex became more socially acceptable, including, with people the participants had no intention of marrying. Multiple scholars have found that dating, while it has not disappeared, has decreased as hookups have become more common. By the mid-1990s hookups were an acceptable form of relating among sexually active adults, especially on college campuses.

This is, according to a review by Garcia, "an unprecedented time in the history of human sexuality." People are marrying and beginning families at ages later than previous generations, while they are becoming sexually mature earlier. As a result, Garcia and others argue, young adults are physiologically able to reproduce but not psychologically or socially ready to 'settle down' and begin a family.

These developmental shifts, Garcia's systematic review of the literature suggests, is one of the factors driving the increase in hookups, a "popular cultural change that has infiltrated the lives of emerging adults throughout the Western world." Hookups are becoming increasingly normative among young adults and adolescents in North America and have taken root throughout the Western world, which represents in how casual sex is perceived and accepted. The hookup culture promises those who take part that they can have sex with "no strings attached." According to Garcia casual sex has become more common, but is leaving people who partake feeling lonely, emotionally scarred, and with "more strings attached than many participants might first assume."

Garcia and others have noted that the "past decade has witnessed an explosion in interest in the topic of hookups, both scientifically and in the popular media. Research on hookups is not seated within a singular disciplinary sphere; it sits at the crossroads of theoretical and empirical ideas drawn from a diverse range of fields, including psychology, anthropology, sociology, biology, medicine, and public health." Difficulties in defining the term can lead to different perceptions of its prevalence.

Cultural context

Hookup culture does not exist in a vacuum. It both influences and is influenced by the wider society. In more traditional dating cultures there is premarital sex, but it occurs in the context of a romantic relationship. "In today's hookup culture, sex is a casual affair that needn't be preceded by any kind of relationship whatsoever, where sexual encounters often occur after huge amonts of alcohol have been consumed by both parties, and where even consensual sex is marked by by vagueness, lack of judgement, and misunderstanding."

While many may consider hookups a phenomenon largely confined to college campuses, people of all ages engage in the behavior. Both men and women engage in hookups for a variety of reasons, which may range from instant physical gratification, to fulfillment of emotional needs, to using it as a means to finding a long-term mate.

Living in a hookup culture can help people engage in casual sex despite their physical, emotional, and moral misgivings about it. Freitas' studied showed that the language people who hook up use to describe the encounters shows they are attempting to excuse the behaviors by implying that they do not have full agency over their sexual decision making.

Freitas has opined that "the great irony of hookup culture--either pre-, during, or post-college--is that it's ultimately a culture of repression. The era of the hookup is about the repression of romantic feeling, love, and sexual desire, too, in favor of greater access to sex--sex for the sake of sex." While women usually feel worse before, during, and after a hookup, the "hookup culture is oppressive of everyone." Regnerus and others have found that "sex is far from a simple pleasure. The emotional pain that lingers after poor sexual decision making, at any age, is evidence of the complex morality inherent to human sexuality. The sexual human begs for something better and more lasting than hooking up or satiating a partner's will."

Experts worry that while the negative repercussions of sex are well known, society does not give people reasons to value sex in general. Without a cultural valuation of sex beyond just the physical pleasure, which not all enjoy anyway, Freitas argues that few see a reason to wait for more meaningful sex than a hookup can provide.

It is feared that “if we live in a culture that teaches young people to care less about their own feelings, and everyone else’s, that bodies are to be used and disposed of afterward, we can be sure that those lessons are going to spill over into everything else they do, and everything they are.”

Young people

Some sociologists have argued that hookup culture is a characteristic of the American college environment, and does not reflect broader American youth culture, just as many college graduates stop engaging in hookups when they leave college preferring instead dating or other sexual arrangements. "The good news," according to one expert, is that "the urge to participate in hookup culture might be fleeting. As people get a bit older, we also see more traditional dating practices across all age groups. That will never change--pursuit of sex and love are at the core of the human condition."

The early sexualization of young girls both results from and helps perpetuate hookup culture. Sexual portrayals and stereotypes in the media also cause confusion in girls. Many girls know how to act and dress sexy, but have never actually felt sexy. Even for the "sexy girls," feeling sexy and desiring sex is something that most have never experienced, and they do not know how to connect the sexy acts they put on to actual erotic feelings. Sexiness has, for today's girls, "become the latest performance, something girls act out rather than experience."

There is a disconnect between desirability and desire, and even the possibility of desire seems to be missing from the sexual education provided to young women. The discrepancy between social attitudes and sex education for young men and young women may have a "a significant influence on behavioral patterns and outcomes in sexual hookups."

This socialization takes place before girls are old enough or emotionally mature enough to even comprehend their own sexiness, much less any romantic feelings they may have for boys or towards relationships. Despite this, one study shows 22% of girls have electronically sent, or sexted, a nude or semi-nude photograph of themselves.

Adults

Men have both long-and short-term mating goals and strategies. Women, while it may at first glance appear that they have short-term strategies, actually only long-term strategies. When women wear short dresses, or dance provocatively, for example, it may seem to men as if it is a strategy designed only to find a mate for the evening. According to Drs. Glen Geher and Scott Barry Kaufman, authors of Mating Intelligence Unleashed: The Role of the Mind in Sex, Dating, and Love, women use those strategies to "trick" the men into going from one night into a long-term relationship.

When men hire pickup artists, or attend one of their conferences, to learn how to approach and seduce women, it is almost always with a hookup in mind. One such "artist" even told a gay conference attendee that if he was looking to learn to find a long-term partner that he was in the wrong place.

What women find attractive in a man, and the way they dress and act to attract them, varies during their menstrual cycle. The widespread use of hormonal contraceptives is thus having a large influence on society and the evolutionary future of humanity.

Among adolescents

See also: Adolescent sexuality in the United States and Adolescent sexuality

A number of studies have found that in the past decade the sexual behavior of American teenagers has changed, so that sexual encounters frequently do not occur in the context of a romantic relationship, but in a "hookup" that is purely sexual. Many observers consider this shift to be a "profound shift in the culture of high school dating and sex."

Long-term, monogamous sexual relationships among teens are less common than a series of short-term sexual relationships. "Any image of long-term adolescent sexual partnerships is a fiction. Teens are likely either to not have had sex at all until late adolescence--the most common pattern--or to have it more often and with more than one partner... Once sexual activity has commenced, it usually continues, and with age the sexual network branches out."

Oral sex usually precedes intercourse as an introduction to sexual activity. Up until youths are 15 years old, oral sex is 50% more common than intercourse, and around 17 years old intercourse becomes more popular. When they speak about oral sex, most adolescents are talking about fellatio and not cunnilingus. The prevalence of anal sex among teens may be on the rise and "the ubiquity of pornography is likely playing a role" in making it more common.

Prevalence

Research on hookups has been focused on American college students, but studies show that upwards of 60% or 70% of sexually active teens in some North American surveys reported having had uncommitted sex within the last year. This is more common among boys than girls. Most teenagers, about 75%, however, have their first sexual experience with someone they are dating.

About half of hookups were a one time affair, and this is the same for both boys and girls. Boys, on the other hand, are more likely have several hookup partners at the same time, and are also more likely to hookup with someone they are not dating. For both genders, hookups are more likely to be with an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend or a friend, than with an acquaintance. Only 6% had sex with someone they just met. Sex with someone they just met or an acquaintance is a one time affair 75% of the time, while the majority of teens (68%) who hook up with a friend or an ex will repeat it.

Over all, 25% of those who had sexual experience with a dating partner also had hooked up with someone they were not dating. Additionally, 40% of those who had hooked up with someone they were not dating had also hooked up with a dating partner in the previous 12 months.

Mainline Protestants are the least likely to report having three or more sexual partners, while Black Protestants are the most likely. Teens who attend church infrequently or not at all are six times more likely to have 3 or more partners than those who do attend.

Cultural context

The "social forces that influence adolescent sexual behavior at one point are often found to have changed when reexamined just 10 years later." Many sexually active teens say that sex is "no big deal," but Regnerus point out that "sex is a big deal, however. Married adults who cheat on their spouses are rarely greeted with apathy."

Adolescent male culture represses and redirects the notion that sex has deep emotional qualities that "can touch our souls." Boys are more likely to compartmentalize moral claims about sex and less likely to understand sex as "optimally involving relational commitment." While 90% of adolescents "agree that most young people have sex before they are really ready," teens hesitate to pass judgement on their peers who are having sex.

"It is widely believed" that teens today know more about sex than their parents did at their age, but research has found that while their "vocabulary of sexual physiology may be astute, their wisdom often ends there--knowledge of words without an understanding of what sex entails both physically and emotionally." Despite the common perception, most studies of teens' knowledge about sex and related topics find their knowledge level is quite low.

Parties are a common place for hookup to occur. They typically involve alcohol "and, in turn, impaired decision making and reduced volition."

Social context

Sexual decision making is "strongly bound to social context." In modern society sexual scripts, the expected behaviors for a given situation, are usually permissive while restrictive scripts are uncommon. "The most compelling sexual scripts--the ones that get the most face time with all but the most sheltered youth--are often" permissive. When considering the number permissive sexual messages that are received every day by adolescents compared to the number of restrictive sexual messages, "the scales would quickly tip toward the permissive."

School peers play a critical role in "creating a sense of normative behavior" that can either encourage teens to have or to delay sex. How deeply a person is embedded in social networks also plays a role in influencing their behavior. Youth with friends who are sexually permissive or who attend schools with a high percentage of non-virgins have a more difficult time avoiding sex, even if they want to.

The perspectives and behaviors of teenagers' parents, siblings, peers, and friends influence their thoughts, attitudes, intentions, and actions. Few will admit that the actions of their friends have an impact on their behavior, but "the pressure and its influence remains apparent to observers." With 8 hours a day in school and media time added on to that, it is "no wonder that" so many adolescents are having sex. "The competition between [restrictive] scripts and mass media scripts about sex is almost no contest."

Girls

Between themselves, girls often discuss how physically painful the first time having sex is, the sexual misbehavior of more promiscuous girls, and the perceived need to be sexually attractive to retain boyfriends.

Girls have sex "not so much as a choice but as a consequence of growing up in a society wherein girls are subject to great sexual pressure, even coercion." 'It just happened naturally,' a common response when asked about the loss of their virginity, is their way of saying that the decision to have sex was made passively, often in order to maintain a valued relationship."

Morality and religion

Only a few adolescents, even among the very religious, have a deep, nuanced sexual ethic. It is "fluid in its boundaries and subject to considerable gray areas and alteration on-the-fly." Adolescents' sexual morality is hardly simply and may not always make a great deal of sense.

For many, religion may play "a confused role" in shaping their sexual attitudes and practices. Those who say they do what makes them happy or what will help them get ahead, as opposed to what God, the Bible, parents, or some other authority says, are significantly more likely to have had sex and to have had more partners. Those who read the Bible more frequently report fewer incidents of sex.

While "many adolescents almost entirely lack an articulated, discernible sexual ethic," their actions show there is a "distinctly middle-class sexual morality" that is evident among religious teenagers, particularly but not exclusively among Jewish and mainline Protestant youths. They are likely to trade vaginal intercourse for activities such as oral sex, mutual masturbation, and pornography and masturbation. This group sees intercourse as dangerous to their future life prospects. They are sexually tolerant, but want to avoid pregnancy and the stigma and hardship of a STD. "Simply put, too much seems at stake. Sexual intercourse is not worth the risk" for them.

Nonreligious youth have far fewer boundaries around sex. They have less guilt after sex, lose their virginity earlier, and are more promiscuous.

Emotional consequences

Most adults don't want anyone, especially teenagers, to have "sexual relationships largely divorced from real intimacy, security, love, and commitment." Society, however, is "threatening to not only accept such half-baked relationships, but even encourage them."

The price most young people to have sex is no longer primarily physical. Instead, most costs are impacts on their psychological condition and their social standing. "The most immediate physical risks of sex--pregnancy or STDs--appear increasingly benign to many adolescents, especially the ones actively pursuing sexual relationships." While some dismiss these concerns, there is no data to suggest that sexually active teenagers exhibit better emotional health, happiness, heightened respect between genders, a more mature sense of responsibility, or an improved ability to make lasting, intimate relationships. "It's just not there--not in the survey data, the interviews, or other published studies."

Harvard Medical School's Mark O'Connell has said that the "explosion of sex without meaning" among American teens "is deeply symptomatic. Emotional deadness, disengagement, and constriction are increasingly the norm. (Oral sex is, after all, 'just something to do.') 'Sexual addiction,' [the medical] term for moving from sexual experience to sexual experience without ever being satisfied, is prevalent. Meanwhile, for many kids precocious sexuality represents not freedom and experimentation but is a byproduct frequently seen with sexual trauma: compulsively driven activity that both expresses and aims to manage the effects of chronic intrusion and overstimulation." Disconnection and loneliness can both trigger and result from adolescent sexual activity.

In high school, boys are just as likely as girls to want their hookup partner to become someone they date. However, the social costs may still be greater for girls. There is a general understanding that there is a double standard where hooking up is more acceptable for boys than for girls, and if a girl is too promiscuous then her reputation may suffer.

A friends with benefits relationship is "always a disaster for somebody. We're human beings, we develop feelings, and somebody always gets hurt as a result," according to psychiatrist Drew Pinsky. "Sex simply does not come without emotional strings for the majority of American adolescents, especially girls."

Teenage relationships

For adolescents, sex and relationships have been decoupled. It is no longer accurate to speak of "young Americans as having premarital sexual relationships; instead we say that they have premarital sex."

"Arousal may come naturally during adolescent development, but sexual happiness does not." Adolescents lack "secure and stable romantic relationships," and while this might not be necessary for satisfying sex, "it does make for emotional health and deeper sexual contentment."

While teens may be sexually mature, they are "in a constant state of emotional maturation and development." Many adolescents must "do a good deal of mental labor and normative affirmation" to convince themselves that teen sex is a good idea, despite it being "a period of relational instability and immaturity." "Sex without security tends to damage people on the inside."

Most boys fail entirely to mention their partners emotions when they discuss their sexual activities. In one study, "very few interviewees" expressed concern for the feelings of his sexual partner."

Adult relationships

Though a girl is "far more likely to feel used and abused after a typical" hook up, the "impersonality of twenty-first-century adolescent sex victimizes girls" and "plenty of harm" is done to boys as well. When taking part in hookups, "the kids don't even look at each other. It's mechanical, dehumanizing. The fallout is that later in life they have trouble forming relationships. They're jaded." Many worry that "if we are indeed headed as a culture to have a total disconnect between intimate sexual behavior and emotional connection, we're not forming the basis for healthy adult relationships."

The casual attitudes adolescents have about sex, and oral sex in particular, "reflect their confusion about what is normal behavior." This intimacy crisis could haunt them in future relationships. "When teenagers fool around before they're ready or have a very casual attitude toward sex, they proceed toward adulthood with a lack of understanding about intimacy."

In college

According to professor of religious studies Donna Freitas, American college students have all the trappings of sexually experience men and women. On the surface, they may seem to know how to be fantastic sexual performers and talkers. They are, in other words, "adept at pretending." According to Freitas, however, their emotional maturity with respect to sex "is another question altogether."

One study has found that in American colleges, 67% of hookups occur at parties, 57% at dormitories or fraternity houses, 10% at bars and clubs, 4% in cars, and 35% at any unspecified available place. A study of Canadian college students who planned to hookup while on spring break showed that 61% of men and 34% of women had sex within a day of meeting their partner.

Freitas states that unless students grew up as an evangelical Christian, or considered themselves to be orthodox in their tradition, religion generally plays a small role in college students' sexual decision making. Greater religiosity is related to a lower incidence of intercourse during a hookup, however.

Freitas argues that many American colleges adopt policies that actively promote a hookup culture. Princeton University, for example, rejected a proposal by students to create an abstinence center to assist students who were not comfortable with a hookup culture.

Prevalence

According to one study the vast majority, more than 90%, of American college students say their campus is characterized by a hookup culture, and students believe that about 85% of their classmates have hooked up. However, most students overestimate the amount of hookups in which their peers engage.

Studies show that most students (most recent data suggest between 60% and 80%) do have some sort of casual sex experience. Of those students who have hooked up, about half of them say that it included intercourse. In one study of college students in New Jersey only 30% of college students reported that their hookups had included sexual intercourse.

Only 20% of students regularly hookup. Roughly one half will occasionally hookup, and one-third of students do not hook up at all. The median number of hookups for a graduating senior on a college campus is seven, and the typical college student acquires two new sexual partners during their college career. Half of all hookups are repeats, and 25% of students will graduate from college a virgin. However, most students overestimate the amount of hookups in which their peers engage.

One study has found that the strongest predictor of hookup behavior was previous experience hooking up. Those who have engaged in hookups that involve penetrative sex are 600% more likely to hookup again during the same semester.

Subculture can affect gender roles and sexuality, and youth subcultures are particularly susceptible to peer pressure. Self esteem is also an indicator: men with high self-esteem and women with low self esteem are more likely to have multiple sexual partners, but hookups are less likely among both genders when they have high self-esteem. Most predictors among males and females rarely differ.

Students average 7 hookups during college. 24% have never hooked up, and 28% have hooked up 10 times or more.

Some students believe their classmates are hooking up 25 times a semester, and that it included intercourse.

On average, guys belive that 80% of other guys on their campus had sex last weekend. The actual rate is between 5% and 10%. "This gives one an idea of how pervasive the hookuping-culture is, how distorted the vision of young men by that culture is, and the sorts of pressures a guy might feel as a Thursday afternoon hints at the looming weekend."

Gays and lesbians

One third of gay and bisexual college men have met an anonymous sexual partner in a public place such as a park, bookstore, or restroom. Other venues including public cruising areas, Internet cruising networks, and bathhouses are popular for gay men, but not for lesbians or heterosexual couples.

Gender differences

One study has found that in hookups men are far more likely to receive oral sex than women. In a survey of first time heterosexual hookups, 55% of the time only the man received oral sex, 19% of the time only the woman received oral sex, and 27% of the time both partners received oral sex. By contrast, in a survey of heterosexual relationships, the study found that 32% of the time only the man received, 16% of the time only the woman received, and 52% of the time both received. The survey also suggested that both men and women are less likely to reach orgasm during a hookup, with 31% of men and 10% of women reaching orgasm in a hookup as opposed to 68% of women and 85% of men reaching orgasm during their last sexual activity in a relationship. Armstrong et al. have concluded that

A challenge to the contemporary sexual double standard would mean defending the position that young women and men are equally entitled to sexual activity, sexual pleasure, and sexual respect in hookups as well as relationships. To achieve this, the attitudes and practices of both men and women need to be confronted. Men should be challenged to treat even first hookup partners as generously as the women they hook up with treat them.

Males are more likely to experience intercourse during a hookup. Belief in gender equality can negatively affect likelihood of engaging in hookups.

One study has found that men have a higher opinion a hookup the morning after it than women do. However, "there are many men out there at colleges and universities across America who are sad, ashamed, and/or ambivalent about hooking up and the sex they are having; who wish for long term relationships, dating, love, and romance; and who feel that that their sex lives are pretty unfulfilling, even bad and embarrassing."

Women feel more open than men to discuss their disappointment with hookup culture in general, and with their participation in it in particular. As they have been conditioned to believe that their peers are all engaging with the culture, and that their classmates all enjoy it, women still feel less free in group settings than in one-on-one interviews with researchers to admit their dissatisfaction, however. For men, on the other hand, even when they are "deeply, profoundly wounded" by their participation in hookup culture, they "almost universally" tend not to admit it. To complain about hookup culture is to risk their masculinity, and so they often suffer in silence.

While hookups may appear to be mutual, "it is guys who run the show."

Most of the time guys initiate a hookup. Less than a third of responaents said it was mutual. It is twice as likely to place place in theguys room as the girls, and while it enhances the guys reputation it hurts hers.

In their last hookup, only 19% of women orgasmed, compared to 44% of men. Women who received cunninligus had an orgasm about 25% of the time, though the men who give it believe it to be 60% of the time. During hookups that involve intercourse, women only orgasm 34% of the time, though men believe the orgasm 58% o the times they have sex.

Sexual satisfaction

While students may "appear to revel in hookup culture when in public," when speaking to researchers in private they admit "that much of the sexual activity in hookups is unwanted, at worst, and ambivalent, at best." One researcher found that while few students "could speak about good sex from personal experience, many continued having sex anyway, often for the purpose of simply being able to say to their peers that they were having it."

The "irony of hookup culture" is that students continue to have sex outside of a relationship, despite the fact that they are uncomfortable doing so, and don't find the sex very fulfilling or very good. The hookups themselves often become "mechanical as a result of so much repression of emotion." While many students suspect that sex can be "pleasurable, meaningful, exciting, emotionally vulnerable, and connective," or at the very least better than what they get during a hookup, "good, romantic, loving, committed, fulfilling sex was a rarity during college and within hookup culture."

One student has said that sex on campus "can happen anytime," which requires those who are hooking up not to treat it like a big deal. As this sentiment is so prominent among so many students and across so many campuses, "it should come as no surprise that a similarly large population of students feel ambivalent about the sex they've had." In fact, for many young people, after they have lost their virginity, "once they've made this all-important decision and had this once-in-a-lifetime experience," any sex that follows afterward seems irrelevant and not worth caring about.

The separation of emotions from the physical act also complicates matters. Many men worry that their partners do not enjoy themselves, and that there are women on campus who think they are bad in bed, but who are also too embarrassed to ask the women what they think. This cuts both ways, however, as the only function of the hookup is to provide sexual stimulation and not to provide a forum for communication or an opportunity to worry if the other person enjoyed themselves. For this reason, hookups have been described as masturbating with another person present.

Hookups can be discomforting with feelings of pressure and performance anxiety, and especially when they are provided anonymity, many men admit that hookup culture itself fosters sexual performance anxiety. Many men feel "sad, ashamed, and/or ambivalent about hooking up and the sex they are having; who wish for long term relationships, dating, love, and romance; and who feel that that their sex lives are pretty unfulfilling, even bad and embarrassing.

Relationships

Hookup culture has socialized students to skip over dating and progress directly to sexual activity. However, "most of these same students didn't want to be thought of merely as someone to have sex with after a night of drunken partying, or someone to walk away from without a care." They fact that they are thought of this way, and think of others the same way, takes an emotional toll.

Hookup culture, and the inexperience with dating that accompanies it for many college students, has been described as an "open wound" in the physche of college students. When students have a negative hookup experience and contrast it to "their rosy and inflated perceptions," they will often draw the conclusion that "something must be wrong with them because they failed to have a good or unemotional hookup like everyone else." The likely consequences of this are internalization, shame, and repression. Students, college administrators say, "are so in need of guidance and conversation about the loneliness and the pain they feel."

Dating, at least in college, seems to be gone for good.

Sexual promiscuity once existed on college campuses along side more traditional forms of dating, but now "hooking up is the alpha and omega of young adult romance."

"Today campus culture is no longer about dating to find an appropriate mate. Now it's more about mating to find an appropriate date!"

After spending years living in a hookup culture, many men find it difficult to transition into serious adult relationships.

The sex that takes place in hookups is not considered to be healthy. The skills needed in adult relationships "rarely feature" in hookups. Participants don't learn how to ask for what they want, how to listen to their partners, how to negotiate pleasure, improve their technique, or to keep monogamous sex interesting.

"Rarely do we [adults and parents] talk about a sexuality that can be both both passionate and ethical; rarely do we even explain that there is such a thing as ethical sexuality that doesn't promote or even include abstience as a goal."

Choosing to have a lot of sex over less, more quality sex, teaches young people nothing about long-term commitment.

Living in hookup culture isn't "orgasmic revelry," but in sends young adults into adulthood "misinformed and ill prepared."

Loneliness on campus

Many students feel tremendously lonely on a college campus where the hookup culture permeates. Students often feel that hookups are the only option, and that their peers do not date, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as fewer students date because they believe their classmates do not believe in dating. Students on these campuses generally feel that the decision about whether or not to be in a relationship is out of their control. They feel that "hookup culture dictated for them that there would be no dating, and that they simply had to to endure this reality."

There has been such a decline in dating culture on college campuses that most students have had more hookups than first dates. On some campuses, dating is so rare that many students do not have the skills to know how to ask someone out. There is even a course at Boston College on how to plan and execute a date.

Policies on many campuses play a role in perpetuating and even encouraging hookup culture. Orientation programs for new students often only talk about how to gain consent for sex and to protect against STIs, and almost never about relationship skills more generally. This reinforces the sense that students on that campus do not date.

Students say that they turn to hookups to avoid feeling lonely and sad, even though they also recognize that hookup culture is the source of their loneliness and sadness. "Hookup culture is all about the commodification of myself; buying and selling myself to make myself less lonely, while at the same time making myself lonelier in the process."

With the perception that the practice of hooking up is so widespread, students fear that if they vocally dissent from the culture that they will be left out socially. Students will often find themselves wearing an "empty, humiliating grin" the morning after a hookup, as it "is part and parcel of what hookup culture is like for students: you must smile in public about it, even if what you did is emptying you out emotionally.

All of this forces students to "become hardened about sex, dropping all those needs and hopes they may have had about its potential romantic dimensions." As they continue down this path, it will begin to dawn on most students that skipping over the relationship and moving straight to the bedroom leaves them wanting more. Large quantities of alcohol help to ease the pain and loneliness, to cover up for their interpersonal inadequacies, and to facilitate the next hookup as well.

Wanting a relationship

"A hookup is a sexual act that thwarts meaning, purpose, and relationship," but most students do want to be in a relationship. For many, however, "their fantasies about romance often remain unfulfilled wishes for them while on campus." While some claim that hook ups fit students busy personal and professional schedules better and is thus liberating, others counter that living in the hookup culture is not at all liberating if what students want is to actually go on dates. "If you are looking for a relationship," one student told a researcher, the hookup "is a cheap substitute for it. Then the next day there is usually some guilt tied to it."

The vast majority of students in studies say that they would like to be in a committed relationship. One has found that 63% of college-aged men and 83% of college-aged women would prefer a traditional romantic relationship at their current stage in life to casual sex. Additionally, 95% of women and 77% of men say they prefer dating to hooking up. "Without exception, [students] discuss a long-term monogamous relationship as their desired end goal." The lessons imparted by hookup culture have "set back" these students, however, who often have little experience dating, and few skills in asking a romantic partner out as a result.

While more than half of students of both genders say they would like a hook up to develop into a romantic relationship, only 6.5% (4.4% of men and 8.2% of women) expect that one will. Only half of women, 51%, and only 42% of men, have tried discussing the possibility of beginning a romantic relationship with a hookup partner. The regret and other negative consequences seen following a hookup may result from students trying to negotiate their desire for immediate sexual gratification and their desire for a stable relationship.

More than half of college relationships begin with a hook-up, and usually after months of engaging is a serial hookup. Relationships that begin as a hookup, or as a "friends with benefits" situation report lower levels of satisfaction, however.

Hookups and risk

The "negative consequences of hookups can include emotional and psychological injury, sexual violence, sexually transmitted infections, and/or unintended pregnancy." Most students report with not concerning themselves with or being concerned about the health risks that come with hookups, especially if their partner was a member of their own community, such as a college campus.

Hookups often result in and psychological injury, sexual violence, sexually transmitted infections, and unintended pregnancy. In one qualitative study, only 2% felt desirable or wanted after a hookup. More than a third, on the other hand, felt regretful or disappointed, and others reported feeling nervous or uncomfortable as well.

One study of college students found that only 46.6% of students who had oral, anal, or vaginal sex during their most recent hookup used a condom. Multiple sexual partners and inconsistent condom usage significantly increase the risk of unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. Hookups can also reduce health risks, especially when they deemphasize intercourse. Oral sex and making out allow curious adolescents to experiment without many of the risks associated with penetrative sex. Noncoital hookups are associated with higher degrees of concern about personal safety.

Mental health

Hookup culture has "profound" emotional effects on the students who live in it. Discrepancies between their behaviors (i.e. emotionally void hookups) and their desires (i.e. love, companionship, and a relationship) have "dramatic implications for physical and mental health."

Despite the "popular myth" that hookups are sex without emotional entanglements, there is a "striking disconnect" between this perception and the emotionally complex aftermath that students actually experience. "At its root," hookup culture silences, shames, isolates, and disempowers students, quashing their ethics, desires, and differences, their need for respect and connection, and their need to be treated with bodily dignity, to express emotion, and to experience pleasure.

Students who report being profoundly upset about hooking up say the encounters made them feel, among other things, used, miserable, disgusted, and duped. One told a researcher that after a hookup they "usually take a shower to rid myself mentally and physically [and] never want it to happen again." In order to avoid becoming a victim, experts believe "that the first step is to acknowledge the dangers inherent in the free-and-easy hookup approach to dating and sex."

Students tend overestimate their peers comfort level with hookups. One study found that students overestimated both sexes' comfort level with various activities during a hookup; men reported higher levels of comfort than women. This misperception of sexual norms is another reason why students continue to hookup, even when they do not personally endorse the behavior.

Beyond just the degrading gender implications that are an inherent part of hookup culture, taking part in it, or even just existing around it, can be debilitating to students. It can diminish their sexual decision making skills and even their sexual identities themselves.

Hookup culture has taught, or tries to teach, students to repress their natural romantic feelings for others, particularly after a sexual encounter. Because of this, hookups have been likened to "masturbating with another person present." The problem is that "the sheer amount of repression and suppression of emotion required" is too great, and "most students fail at this goal, walking away with feelings for their partner."

Particularly for women, hookup culture exposes students to high rates of emotional trauma and physical assault. Those with the most regret about their hookups also reported more symptoms of depression. Furthermore, women's depression worsened with each new sex partner she had within the previous year.

However, many men are just as stressed out by hookup culture as their female counterparts. Students who engaged in penetrative sex hookups are more likely to report being depressed and lonely than those who do not. Additionally, students of both genders who had ever engaged in an uncommitted sexual encounter reported lower levels of self-esteem compared to those who had not.

Regret

"A number of studies" have found that students, both men and women, overwhelmingly regret their hookups. In one, 77% of students regretted their hookups, and in another 78% of women and 72% of men who had uncommitted vaginal, anal, and/or oral sex regretted the experience. Intercourse that occurred less than 24 hours after meeting, and those that took place only one time are the most likely to be regretted. Men were more likely to be sorry for having used another person, and women regretted the experience because they felt they had been used. While women usually feel worse after a hook up than men do, 39% of men expressed extreme regret, shame, and frustration with themselves about their hookup experiences.

Men

Some studies show that men "like hookup culture more than women do, or at least they say they do." Despite liking it more than women, only a quarter of men reported having a positive reaction after hooking up, while half had a negative reaction and the final quarter were ambivalent. In interviews, college men "expressed distinct discomfort" with the hookup culture paradigm.

Hookup culture requires that men "grin and bear [it] expressing dissent, even it they, too, hope for more from their encounters and feel disappointed with the lack of meaning in their relationships." It is socially acceptable for women, on the other hand, to at least complain about it, at least to their close friends.

The stereotype that young men are hypersexual, sex-crazed, and reckless is largely false. However, as many men feel pressured to live up to it, especially while in college, it is a destructive stereotype to maintain. This view of men and masculinity is "not only deeply flawed and misleading, but disastrous for the psyches of young men."

While they do it less so than women, many men will tell researchers that they not only regret their hookups, but also about how hooking up makes them feel taken advantage of. Only 15% of college men speak of hookups in terms that one would assume the typical "sex crazed" college man would use, and their responses tended to be much shorter than those who expressed regret. For these reasons and more, one researcher has said that "within hookup culture, no one really wins, but perhaps men lose most of all."

Hooking up is also a way for guys to establish homosocial bonds with one another, and to establish a social pecking order.

There is a "creeping anxiety that continually haunts guys sexual activities." They worry that they are not good enough, or not big enough, or hard enough for the women with whom they are hooking up.

Guys feel great pressure to be good in bed.

Wanting to fit in

Many students only hook up so that they can tell their friends that they did so. They want to be able to say and feel that they fit in, that they are a true college student according to the standards of the day and the hookup culture that permeates the campus, and that they are normal. The reality is that students are not are sexually permissive as their friends believe they are, a problem exacerbated by students' media diets and the influence it has on them. Hookup culture does not cater to heterosexual men and male desire so much as it does to male anxieties about living up to so much sexual expectation.

Since the common perception is that there is much hooking up taking place on campus, students fear that if they openly dissent that they will be left out of the social scene. The hookup culture "has turned hooking up into a sport that all the 'cool' kids are playing--or at least talking about--even if they secretly hate it." When the perception on campus is that hooking up is "just what college students do," it gives students mental and emotional cover to feel less actively responsible for their own sexual decision making.

The ambiguous definition of a hookup "causes problems." A hookup can consist of anything from kissing to intercourse. If many friends are telling stories about how they have hooked up, without providing any further details, then one may assume that all their friends and classmates are having a lot more sex than they are. That false information gives students "a skewed idea of what their peers are doing, and it’s dangerous."

It will impact what they might do, as well, if they think that is normal behavior and that everyone else is doing it. To equate a hookup with casual sex, regardless of how far the participants went, "is to miss the really important part of the conversation, which is that students feel so much pressure to show they are a part of things that they'll count almost anything as a hookup."

Students do so because they want to fit in, even if it means they have to discard their beliefs about how they think other people should be treated, and how they would like to be treated themselves. In their efforts to fit in, "they not only allow others to devalue them, body and soul, but they do the same to others and to themselves." Students "are so desperate to be accepted by their peers that they do all sorts of things they secretly know to be not quite right.

Consent and control

Not all hookups are consensual or wanted, not do all participants even necessarily want sex. One study of unwanted sex found that 78% of unwanted sexual encounters took place in the context of a hookup, while only 14% took place in a committed relationship and 8% on a date. Another study has found that 50% of college women have experienced at least one instance of unwanted sex. Of them, 70% said it came during a hookup.

Roughly 20% of women will be raped at least once while in college, and this includes "gray rape," sex where whether or not consent was given is unclear, and often where neither party is entirely sure how far the other wanted to go. Experts believe "that gray rape is in fact often a consequence of today’s hookup culture."

In a typical hookup, 16% of students feel pressured. When sexual intercourse does not take place during a hookup, 12% said they felt out of control, and 22% felt that way when it did. Of their most recent hookups, 8% of students say it was an experience they did not want to have or one to which they were unable to give consent. Unwanted and nonconsensual sexual encounters are more likely occurring alongside alcohol and substance use.

Drugs and alcohol

For both men and women, the cost of hooking up is high, and students need something to brick up all of that vacancy inside. As most students "are terrible at shutting out the emotional dimensions of sexual intimacy," despite what they may tell their friends, students learn to self-medicate to handle the pain. For young women in particular to "tolerate" having casual sex they "have to get loaded. This whole hooking up culture is making them unhappy and anxious. It requires them to find ways to manage these very intense situations, namely drugs and alcohol." "Women’s self-esteem at that age is tied into how they are experienced by men, and part of dealing with that social anxiety is to drink it away or drug it away.”

The relationship between drinking and the party scene, and between alcohol and hookup culture, is "impossible to miss." In one study, 33% of those who had hooked up indicated that it was "unintentional," and likely due to the influence of alcohol or other drugs. In a survey of first year students, women said that 64% of their hookups came after drinking alcohol. These results were similar to another study which found that 61% of all undergraduates reported drinking alcohol before their last hookup. Those who used either marijuana or cocaine in the past year were also more likely than their peers to have hooked up during the previous 12 months.

The more alcohol that is consumed, the further a hookup generally goes. The students who reported the least amount of alcohol consumption were also the least likely to hook up. At the other end of the spectrum, the greatest alcohol consumption was associated with penetrative sex, and less alcohol consumption with nonpenatrative hookups. Of those who took part in a hook up that included vaginal, anal, or oral sex, 35% were very intoxicated, 27% were mildly intoxicated, 27% were sober and 9% were extremely intoxicated. Alcohol may also be consumed so students may use it as an excuse after the fact, and to justify their behavior.

Hookups "almost always" occur when at least one participant is drunk. On average, men have five drinks when they hookup, and women 3.

Being drunk allows people to explain away their behavior, their poor sexual performance, premature ejaculation, etc. It also is "liquid courage" to allow them to make a sexual advance in the first place.

Wanting out

"For the most part, teenagers either are having sex or they have not yet had it." Few are stopping after the first time. Society has placed so much importance on the first time, on the loss of virginity, that after they have lost it many young adults "typically can't find a good enough reason to stop being sexually active--even if the sex wasn't good, or they didn't feel good about it.... Any sex that follows afterward seems irrelevant and not worth caring about." Students will often feel that after losing their virginity that they are "free" to be licentious, but eventually find that they do not like this freedom as much as they thought they would.

For several years, hookup culture is their home... But eventually, most reject it. It is common for for students to have a "wake up" experience during their sophomore, junior, or senior years, when they realise that they are exhausted, physically and emotionally. They feel emptied out. They become aware that life in hookup culture denies them the experience of meaningful sex and romance. The emotional dissonance is common among both women and men.

On most campuses, there is a silent majority of students who do not like and who are not happy with the hookup culture, and there is a growing movement of students who are speaking out against it. The Anscombe Society, a student run group at Princeton University, was developed to promote "a chaste lifestyle which respects and appreciates human sexuality, relationships, and dignity." The club has grown and spread to other campuses, collectively becoming known as the Love and Fidelity Network. They speak to and for the "so many young adults [who] are looking for a way out of hookup culture." Reception of the group has been mixed; reactions range from friendly to derisive.

Media

See also: Media and American adolescent sexuality

The American Academy of Pediatrics has argued that media representations of sexuality may influence teen sexual behavior, and this view is supported by many scholars,. Young teens who watch movies with more sexual content tend to become sexually active at an earlier age, and engage in riskier sexual behaviors. Youth today live in a culture that is "rife with sexual models and stimuli" and they are exposed to far more messages in the media that encourages sexual activity, including hookups, than they are to messages that would discourage it.

In contemporary music, hookups dominate in lyrics that discuss sex and 92% of Top 10 songs from 2009 containing references to mating or reproduction. In addition, these messages contain unrealistic, inaccurate, and misleading information that young people accept as fact. In television programming aimed at teens, more than 90% of episodes had at least one sexual reference in it with an average of 7.9 references per hour. In particular, the American media is the most sexually suggestive in the world.

The sexual messages contained in film, television, and music are becoming more explicit in dialog, lyrics, and behavior. The media serves as a "super peer" for youth, who then seek to develop a sexual identity that is in line with popular portrayals of casual sex and skepticism towards loving relationships. However, the complicated emotional experiences they have both during and after hookups "thwarts the pursuit of this desired self and leaves youth with challenging emotions and self-loathing."

Pornography

While the question "Who is to blame for hookup culture" does not have a single answer, the easy availability of pornography is among them. Some have even argued that the increase of access to pornography via the internet is what "spurred" hookup culture, in part by challenging the idea that "good sex" takes place in a monogamous relationship.

Over 90% of teens today have access to internet pornography, and between the 3rd and 10th grades more than 90% of children will be exposed to it. Pornography is "a cultural force that is shaping the sexual attitudes of an entire generation" and a "major form of sex ed today for boys; it's going to have dire consequences for the boys, for the girls, and for the culture." Adolescents are being exposed to sex, including alternative sexual practices, "more intensively at earlier ages than ever before."

Most teenage boys look at porn, but don't admit to using it much. Many believe it is helpful for revealing pent up sexual tension and some feel guilty about using it. Most are embarrassed to admit it. They also don't talk to their friends about it, and don't believe that it affects them. Only 3% of girls claim to use internet pornography.

Education

School based sex-ed is "rapidly being replaced as authoritative by uncensored and unchallenged sexual content on the Internet." Pornography is "a central source of adolescents' information about the sexual practices of others. It's a poor source, no doubt, fraught with unreal accounts of hypersexuality, group sex, fetishes, and women who live only to sexually satisfy men. It does not reflect sexual reality." Some boys use pornography as instructional tools about proper sexual technique, a thought that "most girls would certainly loathe."

Internet pornography "is certainly the primary--and, for some, the only--sexual education that teenagers now receive." Exposure to pornography makes acts "presumed to be both normative and mutually pleasurable." Exposure is so widespread that even classroom sex-ed "pales in significance and gravity." Even if adolescents don't watch internet pornography themselves, they will still probably hear about it and be influenced by their friends and peers who do.

Expectations

As the cost of personal computers dropped and online access has increased, internet pornography has "emerged as a primary influence on young people’s, especially men’s, attitudes towards sex and their own sexuality." Both young men and young women learn about sex through pornography, and then adjust their expectations for their sexual partners accordingly.

Additionally, "the ubiquitous of pornography" has changed "their expectations for their partners, and their understanding of desire, gender identity, and how one enters into various types of sexual intimacy." The rising rates of fellatio and declining rates of cunnilingus "suggest that pornography is influencing sexual scripts." Young people are being conditioned to believe that what they see in pornography is normal, and that to act like a porn star is normal as well. "Many boys learn to assume that the thing women do in porn--how they dress and act around men--is also how women are supposed to act in real life. These same boys are learning to expect girls their own age to act like the women in porn videos, too."

Most internet pornography shows submissive women and aggressive men. The main themes of heterosexual pornography are that women always want sex from men, that women like all the sexual acts that men demand of them, and any woman who doesn't realize this at first can be persuaded with a little force. "As a result, some adolescent boys approach girls expecting them to be into anything and everything." It is difficult to determine just how much "adolescent girls have actually internalized the unrealistic (and emotionally harmful) norms of pornography," but the evidence suggests that they are.

Changing mores

One expert has cautioned that as pornography has become ubiquitous, the raunchy has become mainstream, and many men don't even realize that what they're asking for is degrading or unpleasant to women. The copious amounts of pornography freely available on the internet is also influencing girls' understanding of sexiness. Girls as young as middle school-aged are learning to use pornography and porn archetypes to attract the attention of boys. Pornography is just one of a growing list of influences that are "teaching young girls that it's never too early to sex themselves up for the boys."

Both sexes understand how they can make themselves more desirable according to the porn industry's standards, yet at the same time are unaware that their own natural desires are taking a backseat to what they see in pornography. Having sexual desire is no longer as important as being desirable, and this process has been "exacerbated and intensified" by the common and regular exposure to pornography.

Criticism of the media's account of hookup culture

Writer Amanda Hess cites panic over hookup culture in the media as having contributed to overestimations of its prevalence. Kat Stoeffel ridiculed the stock characters that appear in stories, which includes the "Meddlesome Older Journalist" who takes satisfaction in the sorrow of the young women on whom they report, and Salon called for an end to shallow, polemical stories about hookup culture. Tracy Clark-Flory linked criticism of hookup culture to homophobia and resistance to gay marriage.

Media and academic coverage of hookup culture has been dismissed by some by "pop culture feminists" as a "moral panic". Casual sex has always existed on college campuses, according to writer Katie Roiphe, and the current controversy over hookup culture is a merely a rehash of the same old controversies. When writing about hookup culture, University of Pennsylvania student Arielle Pardes believes the media has reduced women to either sluts or prudes.

However, sociologist Mark Regnerus believes that "Sex is a moral act, and it is impossible to think about adolescent sexual attitudes and behavior in morally neutral terms." Multiple studies have found that "official moral neutrality about sex is a fiction: it merely disguises the moral assumptions upon which actors draw and which institutions purvey. There is no value-free perspective on sex."

Works cited

• Regnerus, Mark (2007). Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195320947.