Hookup culture

A hookup culture is one that accepts and encourages casual sexual encounters, including one-night stands and other related activity, which focus on physical pleasure without necessarily including emotional bonding or long-term commitment. It is generally associated with Western late adolescent behavior and, in particular, American college culture. The term hookup has an ambiguous definition because it can indicate kissing or any form of physical sexual activity between sexual partners. The term has been widely used around the world in every generation, for many years.

Most research on hookups has been focused on American college students, but hookups are not limited to college campuses. Adolescents, emerging adults, men and women engage in hookups for a variety of reasons, which may range from instant physical gratification, to fulfillment of emotional needs, to using it as a means of finding a long-term romantic partner. Media reaction to hookup culture has been dismissed as moral panic.

The rise of hookups, a form of casual sex, has been described by evolutionary biologist Justin Garcia and others as a "cultural revolution" that had its beginnings in the 1920s. During the twenty-first century paid sex was not considered to belong to the category of casual sex; however, in the 1900s-1930s there was more to paid sex than simply the exchange of money–it was a contact between humans without the ties of a relationship. Since the 1920s, there has been a transition from an age of dating to an era of hookup culture. Technological advancements such as the automobile and movie theaters brought young couples out of their parents' homes, and out from their watchful eyes, giving them more freedom and more opportunity to engage in sexual activity.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s brought a loosening of sexual morals which allowed for sex to become uncoupled from relationships and non-marital sex to become more socially acceptable. Some scholars, including Garcia and Freitas, have found that dating, while it has not disappeared, has decreased as the frequency of hookups have increased. By the mid-1990s, Freitas found that hookups were an accepted form of interactions among sexually active adults especially those located on college campuses.

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