Hook-Up Culture Debunked: College Students Are Not Having More Sex Than They Were 25 Years Ago
As each generation gets older, you’re bound to hear its members gripe about the misfortunes of the newer, less “dignified” children that are growing up. The notion that college kids in today’s world are more promiscuous and have a higher number of sexual partners isn’t necessarily true. According to one study conducted at the University of Portland, the amount of sex on college campuses has not increased in the past 25 years.
"We find no evidence of substantial changes in sexual behavior that would support the proposition that there is a new or pervasive 'hookup culture' among contemporary college students," the study says.
The American Sociological Association found that only one-third of college students have had more than one more sexual partner in the past year. That’s the same as it was in the 1980s.
"Sexual behavior among contemporary college students has not changed greatly over the past two and a half decades," the study's authors wrote.
Many of the assumptions that college kids are having more sex come from the common interpretation of “hooking up” as sex.
Martin Monto, one of the study's authors and a professor from the University of Portland, says that “[the term] hooking up is often interpreted as meaning sexual intercourse, when many people use it to mean just kidding. That could contribute to the widespread misconception that college kids are having more sex than they did 20 years ago.”
The research was done with 1,829 participants, ages 18-25, who had completed at least one year of college. The responses from 1988-1996 were compared to the ones from 2002-2010.
"We're questioning some of the popular interpretations of the hookup culture that college is a sexual playground," Monto said. "We wanted to question the assumption that college has become a place with lots of no-strings-attached sex. The evidence suggests it hasn't."