Psychology today hookup culture

Today's hook-up culture is simply the latest iteration of this It's a normal part of growing up and it rarely causes psychological damage.
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After a few too many rounds of cheap vodka shots and Natty Lights, everyone piles into a dank frat house with dirty floors and not enough light, finds another mildly attractive but equally drunk person, and makes out with them a bit. Sometimes they go home together.

It's really not a big deal. It's not really that black and white. Many college students still have relationships, fall in love, and experience heartbreak.

The Reality of Hook Up Culture

Some also just happen to make out with random people at clubs, use Tinder as a way to meet people, and have lots of casual sex. Others don't participate at all. The majority of both genders say they feel pretty good about the hookup scene, and many enthusiastically endorse it. And I don't necessarily want to be limited to one girl. Is it so wrong to try to meet as many people as possible while avoiding a serious relationship in the process?

Our generation has been labeled as commitment-phobes, but many of us embrace the independence and versatility that comes with a no-strings-attached lifestyle. That's not to say that sexual promiscuity is the panacea to all relationship woes. In fact, research indicates that it can foster negative emotions in the long run.

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So hookup culture has its drawbacks. Some students love it and others hate it.

Friends with Benefits: What Can Monkeys Teach Us About Our Hookup Culture?

Emma Teital, a National Magazine Award-winning columnist, sums it up nicely: Its sole purpose, I think, beyond higher learning, should be to solidify the world's indifference to you. If you do that keg stand, you will vomit. If you drink that coagulated milk, you will vomit. If you have empty, meaningless sex throughout college, you'll become an emotional cripple, contract gonorrhea and, most likely, vomit.

But these are lessons learned through experience, not indoctrination. That's just not going to happen for most. Freshmen throw themselves into their first year, experience some cheap thrills, and then gradually figure out what they actually need. Regret from hooking up may be linked to negative emotional outcomes, especially in women. According to an article by Steven E.


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Rhoads, Laura Webber, et al. The American Psychological Association also says that hookups can result in guilt and negative feelings.

Cultural Shifts in Dating

Students who reported to Freitas that they were profoundly upset about hooking up say the encounters made them feel, among other things, used, miserable, disgusted, and duped. College students base their sexual ideas and sexual actions within a peer culture. This is where students who are peers are comparing and differing sexual situations in one's own life amongst each other to create a foundation for the current hookup culture.

Bogle describes the peer culture at universities as the "sexual arena. This peer culture is not only amongst college students, but it may start to develop around the time puberty starts in middle school for both genders around the age of eleven to fourteen years old.

In general, puberty is a time when sexuality and body awareness becomes a main focus for individuals to formulate this aspect of their identity. Once in college, for most students, the parental aspect is diminished leaving a student feeling a high degree of freedom to truly explore and expand their whole personal identity, strongly including sexual identity in this "sexual arena.

According to Bogle, the campuses her studies were done at had a common trend of college students being strongly interested in every other student's private life. The viewers of this activity process, interpret, and form assumptions about what was observed. These types of sexual activity or public displays of affection could be as meaningless as two individuals romantically speaking to each other in a high capacity location on campus or could be as extreme as two individuals walking into a bedroom together at a party.

This peer culture has evolved and escalated with access to rapid communication such as texting on cell phones and multiple social media applications. Most these social media applications are identity profiles, public thought disposals, and virtual photo albums of oneself, where other's are just a click away from cyber analysis of how that individual displays themselves physically, sexually, psychologically, emotionally, and mentally on the internet. Bogle states that the knowing of other's personal lives isn't just a purpose to gossip, but a way to observe, analyze, and be impacted by other's sexual actions, solely for the purpose of their own actions.

Some studies have made a connection between hookup culture and substance use. About a third of the students who reported engaging in vaginal, anal, or oral sex during a hookup reported being very intoxicated and another third reported being mildly intoxicated. Studies suggest that the degree of alcoholic intoxication directly correlates with the level of risky behavior.

Studies have generally shown that greater alcohol use is associated with more sexual activity in the course of a hookup. At the other end of the spectrum, the greatest alcohol consumption was associated with penetrative sex, and less alcohol consumption with non-penatrative hookups. Hookup culture on college campuses is intertwined with a broader society. On the other hand, 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.

But evidence exists that young women are propelling it too.

The Reality of Hook Up Culture -Psychology Matters Asia

Hookup culture also exists outside of the college environment. Location-based geosocial networking smartphone applications, a. Life course studies indicate that as people grow older and as they subjectively identify as adult, they are less likely to engage in casual sexual behavior. The American Academy of Pediatrics has argued that media representations of sexuality may influence teen sexual behavior, [80] and this view is supported by a number of studies.

Cable television is filled with reality shows that depict an image of partying and glorified hookups, one of the most well known shows being MTV's Jersey Shore. As the cost of personal computers dropped and online access has increased, Heldman and Wade, along with others, argue that internet pornography has "emerged as a primary influence on young people's, especially men's, attitudes towards sex and their own sexuality. There are many ideas as to why people think young adults are involved in this hook up culture, such as that they feel like they have to do it to fit in.

Sexual Hookup Culture: A Review

However, many boys and girls did report that they do hook up with random people in order to find someone they could possibly start something serious with. There have also been a number of studies that have studied the mental aspects of casual hookups. In a study done by psychologist Seth Schwartz has shown results that say that people who had many random hook ups had more psychological issues. They then came up with results that showed that penetrative sex hook ups made people with greater feelings of depression and loneliness have a decrease in those symptoms and feelings.

For example, a study by Reiber and Garcia in show that a lot of people that engage in sexual hook ups feel uncomfortable. Random hook ups also have shown to cause feelings of pressure and performance anxiety in a study by Paul, et al. In this research it was demonstrated that the number of sex partners people have nowadays has barely any difference to the number of partners people had twenty to thirty years ago.


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  8. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Media and American adolescent sexuality. The Myths and Realities of the Hookup Experience". What does it mean? Hookups have replaced casual sex and even dating on many college campuses over the years, but as is so often the case when sex is discussed, it's not altogether clear what everybody is talking about when they say "hookup.

    Researchers at the University of Montana found so many different definitions among the students they studied that they had to come up with a precise definition to be sure everybody was talking about the same thing. Among the children, hooking up was always a sexual experience, but the nature and extent of what they did could vary widely. Review of General Psychology. There's an awful lot wrong with moral panic stories about "hookup culture" on campus [ Examining differences in geosocial networking app use and sexual risk behavior of emerging adults.

    A History of Sexuality in America. The New Culture of Sex on Campus. Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus.