Hookup Culture in the Age of Social Media.

It is no secret or surprise that social media has a compelling effect on our society. What we see and hear online, in television shows, and movies (as well as other mediums) significantly influences our internal thoughts, relationships, and behaviors whether we realize it or not. So, it really isn’t a shock that the media is being blamed for the acceleration of hookup culture on college campuses too.

With that said, the way different social medias are portraying and glorifying casual sex and hookups has fostered a culture where young individuals feel compelled to engage in this type of activity to fit into societal norms. Since college hookup culture has been portrayed as something casual, fun, accessible/acceptable, and ~a part of the full college experience~, why would you not want to participate in it too? I mean, after all, it is “normal” and everyone is doing it, right? Well, I hate to break it to you but not necessarily. What he media does not show you most of the time is how wrong it can all go too. It is always important to remember that what is portrayed online is not the reality. What the reality is is that unsafe hookups can lead to an abundance of problems including STDs, potential pregnancies, and major emotional/social damage.

One social media platform that most definitely fosters this behavior is Snapchat. Snapchat is the perfect platform for hook-up culture because when you message and chat with someone in the app, once you open the message, the message goes away forever so there is no way to track what has been said once read. The same thing goes for the picture aspect of the app as well, once you send a picture, you can’t view it again and once the person you sent it to views it, it’s gone forever once again. From personal experience, it is more common these days to message someone on Snapchat and ask for their Snapchat than it is to ask for someone’s phone number. How weird is that..? I remember my first week of college at Boulder and every single new friend I made socially and in the classroom asked for my Snapchat for a way to contact me instead of my phone number. Super interesting. Because of how Snapchat works with disappearing texts and pictures, it is the perfect app when it comes to booty calls and late-night hook ups, especially if both individuals want to keep it a secret or on the down low. When talking to my friends about their experiences with hookup culture, all of them said that they only use Snapchat to communicate with potential prospects. Snapchat is universally/socially known to be the informal platform to communicate with others, especially for hooking up in college. But iMessage and texting (with your phone number), that is known to be the formal way of communicating. If you are communicating via text with someone you are hooking up with, then you must be in a “situationship” or a committed relationship.

If you are in college, there’s a 99.9% chance that you understand the differences between “situationship”, “friends with benefits”, and a “sneaky link”. I have defined FWB relationships before, and sneaky link is just another term for a FWB/booty call relationship, but situationship is a new one that I learned in my years in college. The best way to describe a “situationship” is a consistent romantic relationship that remains undefined — it exists between casual hookup and committed partner/relationship. You can be exclusive without the label of “boyfriend/girlfriend” but you are exclusively seeing each other with no commitment. Confusing right? My friends that I see in these relationships act, communicate, and sometimes post each other (online) fully acting like they are dating without the label. This type of relationship among my peers is tempting because of how casual it can be to end it. Breaking up with your girlfriend/boyfriend is scary and a big deal, but breaking off a situationship? Not as big a deal and less scary for reasons I don’t really understand. This type of undefined, exclusive romantic relationship has emerged because of how afraid my generation is of commitment. It’s insane and the concept is mind-boggling to me! I truly do not understand the inner workings of it and what it exactly means to “play the game”.