<p>Might be just what you thought/feared.</p>
<p>Oh please, like this is at ALL different than the 1980s?</p>
<p>Every generation thinks they reinvented the wheel, or maybe every generation of parents forgets what it is like to be a kid.</p>
<p>No kidding. Casual sex wasn’t just invented yesterday. </p>
<p>What rhandco & PG said. </p>
<p>None of this sounds new to me. I’m skeptical about the premise that young people aren’t in actual relationships though. My D has been in one for 2+ years now and DS is “facebook official” with a young woman as well. This seems to be the pattern amongst the same age kids of my friends. Maybe I just know nice people, but I don’t think I can take all the credit. On the flip side, most adults who I have discussed this with went through phases of “relationship” styles. It is/was not uncommon to have a year or two of “hook-up culture” to one degree or another between longer term relationships. Awww to be 22 again . . .</p>
<p>There have always been “rules” around what the agenda is. The best relationships of any kind are when both people are on the same page with whatever level of seriousness is assigned to the partnership. The article seems to describe all kinds of relationship agendas. “Hook-up culture” makes it sound like random bath house coupling or something. To casually date (with benefits) a person who you don’t love and openly have no interest in marrying was not invented yesterday, though.</p>
<p>The more things change the more they stay the same. Sounds an awful lot like the 80s to me as well, just with some different labeling. (But don’t tell my mom that!)</p>
<p>I thought we were pretty cool in the 70s. My dad said there was more going on in Berlin in the 20s. </p>
<p>I just came from an exercise class at which they played “Stay With Me” by Rid Stewart. Early 1970s. Clearly a song about hook-up culture. Sleep with me, you can even use my best cologne, I’ll pay your cab fare, but be gone in the morning. The language has changed from one night stand to hook up culture, but the concept is the same. </p>
<p>I’m one who does think this era is different. The ease of meeting people for casual sex through social media is new. One just needs to find someone DTF, no questions asked. In the 80s, one had to go to a bar/party and “get lucky”. </p>
<p>I would put money on it that bars and parties are still the preferred method for young adults to meet potential “mates”. If it ain’t broke why fix it?</p>
<p>DTF? Is that decent to um, flirt? </p>
<p>We were just talking about this at a research seminar the other day (I do research on young adult sexual behavior) and one of our senior mentors mentioned that he was a child of the 1960s and that the “hook up culture” being described didn’t feel all that different from what he and his peers were doing back them.</p>
<p>I feel like hook-up culture hasn’t really influenced any of these “frustrating” things, and they’re just features of interpersonal relationships. There was never really an accepted standard of how long you were “supposed” to wait before having sex. Complications with dating or having sex with exes’ friends was always a thing. So on and so forth. Young adults have been having complicated sexual and romantic relationships since the dawn of time; it’s just that now there’s less of a societal stigma in discussing one’s sexual life and being open about being sexually active.</p>
<p>The other thing, as @saintfan pointed out, is that there’s no data on this and little evidence that young adults aren’t doing romantic relationships and/or are doing them less often than their counterparts from earlier decades.</p>
<p>And sure…meeting people through social media is a new thing, but that only changes the means, not the behavior. Given my experience with college students I agree that parties are still the preferred method to meet someone. But the people who are using Tinder or Grindr or whatever now to find sexual partners are the ones in the 1980s who’d take out a personal ad or cruise or whatever, and the ones in the 1920s who’d go to a speakeasy to find someone. Only the method has changed, but not the part that young adults like to have sexual relationships, sometimes without dating their partner (insert pearl-clutching here).</p>
<p>I wonder how many people who are hooking up wish it was a relationship but go along with it because they think it is the path to get one?</p>
<p>We have movies like “Friends with Benefits”. I don’t doubt that there are people who are just fine with the hook up scene, but I wonder how many wish the relationships were more than that. </p>
<p>Kind of reminds me of Saturday Night Fever and Grease for that matter. Maybe my mom was right back in the day about those movies being inappropriate. ;)</p>
<p>Friends with benefits definitely isn’t new, either…</p>
<p>There probably are people who do the hookup thing when they really want a relationship. Just as there were when a hookup wasn’t called a hookup. Being in a relationship and hoping for more than you admit to isn’t a new thing. </p>
<p>Didn’t this get debated here ad nauseum earlier?</p>
<p>Here you go <a href=“So how did we end up with hook up culture? - Parent Cafe - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1690502-so-how-did-we-end-up-with-hook-up-culture.html</a></p>
<p>While I think there has always been some very-casual sex going on, I think the prevalence has increased. When I was in college, I knew only two girls that had one-night-stands (I was in a very popular sorority). Typically, the routine was: get a BF, date for awhile, and then sex. Sleeping with a guy on the first date was not typical. Sure there were some rare girls that did that, but it wasn’t the norm. </p>
<p>Just because something “isn’t new,” doesn’t mean that the occurrences are trending the same.</p>
<p>My personal take: The hook-up culture really began in the disco days of the 1970s. It tapered off in the 1980s when a perfect storm of HIV, Herpes, and the Reagan-Bush years emerged. What we’ve been seeing in the years leading up to now is a return to the path we might have stayed on if HIV hadn’t scared the bejeepers out of so many people.</p>
<p>Yep, this waxes and wanes (the prudishness of the '80’s extended in to the '90’s, BTW).</p>
<p>Basically, every generation sneers at and rebels against the previous one.</p>