Hook up culture is commonly defined as a set of beliefs that are based on the idea that uncommitted sexual encounters, which include but are not limited to kissing, oral sex, and vaginal sex, are acceptable. The principles of waiting until marriage to have sex and abstinence are still taught to youth, but many young people believe that hook ups are acceptable despite what their parent’s and other adults may tell them. Though one can make the argument that such content on its own is not harmless, a deeper understanding of hook up culture and its impact cannot be achieved if consumers and researches merely shrug and say “Sex sells.” That would merely be restating a truth that most people already know.

While it is tempting to assume that hook ups and casual sex are recent phenomenon, that could not be farther from the truth. According to Justin R. Garcia, Chris Reiber, Sean G. Massey, and Ann M. Merriwether in their article for the American Psychological Association titled “Sexual hook-up culture”, hook-ups became increasingly frequent starting in the 1920’s after the advents of cars and new entertainment such as movie theaters since young adults could leave home and indulge in their sexual desires with more freedom (2013).

Additionally, a lot of people belief that hook-ups always leave people feeling happy afterwards, which is simply not true since Garcia and his colleagues reference a qualitative study on 187 participants to determine how they felt during and after hook-ups. The findings showed that 65 percent of them felt good during the hook-up while 35 percent of the respondents reported that they felt regretful or letdown afterwards (Paul & Hayes, 2002, Garcia et. al 2013).

With that being established, hook-ups are not always a positive experience. Plus, gender is also correlated with the experiences people have related to hook-ups since Paul and Hayes found women reacted more negatively to such experiences than men and Townsend found in his 1995 study that women were more committed to such low commitment encounters than men (Garcia et. al, 2013).

Although the history behind the increase in hook-ups and the role gender plays in the experiences that people after hook-ups are important factors to consider, it is crucial to include the differences between baby boomers and millennials when discussing hook-up culture. That is because in Karen Kaplan’s article “The paradox of millennial sex: More casual hook-ups, less partners”, it is reported that average amount of sexual partners that individuals born in the 1980’s and 1990’s was slightly lower at 8.26 versus 11.26 for baby boomers (people born from 1946 to 1964). These findings were based on a study by the General Social Survey (latimes.com).

Despite the information’s validity, it cannot be used to make generalizations about what every study on hook-ups found. Conversely, based on information from the General Social Survey, it was also determined that 35 percent of people from Generation X (people born from 1960 to 1980) reported having sex with somebody besides a girlfriend or boyfriend when they were in their late teens or twenties while 45 percent of millennials reported having had sex in their late teens or twenties (latimes.com).

Upon hearing the statistics above, some may think that youth are having more uncommitted sex than before. However, University of Portland sociologist Martin Monto analyzed the responses to the General Social Survey from 1988 to 1996 and compared to individuals who took the survey between 2002 and 2010. He found that 65.2 percent of those who took the survey between 1988 and 1996 stated they had sex weekly or more frequently in the previous year whereas 59.3 percent of individuals who took the survey between 2000 and 2010 answered the same way (Monto, 2013). The evidence that supports the idea there was not any drastic changes in the amount of hook-ups is that Monto discovered that only the language for describing sexual encounters changed since hook-up and other similar terms only began to appear since 2006 and Robert Max Jackson, a sociologist from New York University noticed that students merely talked more about sex and that this did not indicate they were having more sex (scientificamerican.com).

Ultimately, it is difficult to make any general conclusions that accurately describe whether hook-up culture is more prevalent in our society, let alone take a moral stance against it that is always supported because the findings display mixed outcomes. Furthermore, any kind of moral stance regarding hook-ups can only be studied in terms of how many people have a certain view and why they have such views. This is due to the subjective nature of such views since they differ from individual to individual and cannot be measured by quantitative methods.

In my opinion, there is no problem with hook-up culture since there is not enough evidence to suggest there is and it is better for individuals to be responsible for their sex lives. Therefore, I believe the best approach that people can take regarding hook-ups is communicating what is expected as a result of the hook-up, practicing safe-sex or refraining from sex if they do not want to feel pressured into engaging in hook-up culture, and avoiding the use of double standards such as but not limited to calling women sluts for being sexually active while being sexually active as a man or calling a man a pig for indulging in their sexual desires while being a sexually active woman.

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-s...

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/students...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christine-henseler/m...

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/02/ce-corner.aspx