As a top institution of higher education, Princeton tries to do its best to prepare us for our future: offering career fairs, hosting resume writing sessions, and even offering Last Lectures about careers in local government. But there is one place where the University is falling short: preparing its students to form healthy relationships. There is a normalization of hookup culture at the University that is detrimental to many students’ long-term goals of healthy, sustainable relationships. The University must provide better resources in educating its student body about the potential social and emotional harms of hookup culture during freshman orientation and follow up in SHARE training material for upperclassmen and eating clubs. At the same time, it’s up to us to work towards forming healthy habits.
Many Princeton students want to one day get married and start our own families. However, many students view that goal as distant. Some may justify hookup culture by saying that college is a time to have fun and explore. While this may be true in many aspects of life — we try out new internships and travel to new places — the logic doesn’t apply when we are trying to form lasting habits to serve long-term goals of commitment.
To form a habit, you need to perform an activity repeatedly until it becomes second nature. For example, to become a good runner you must run regularly. Similarly, to know how to be a good friend, you have to take the time and energy to form meaningful friendships. It follows that in order to become a good spouse one day, you need to practice commitment and trust. Serial hookups teach and reinforce the opposite. According to the 2023 Senior Survey, 44.6 percent of students who described themselves as “single,” and 83.4 percent of students who reported their relationship status as “it’s complicated,” had sex at least two or three times per semester. This data suggests that casual sex is extremely prevalent on Princeton’s campus. This should not be the norm.
At Princeton, we are constantly working to form new, success-inducing habits, encouraged by the University and the surrounding social climate. We learn important life skills: how to manage our time, how to work under pressure, and how to balance our academic and social lives. So why can’t the University take steps now that will enable us to be sufficiently educated on how we can become good spouses and parents?
Understanding and practicing commitment is key in forming and maintaining long-lasting, committed relationships and marriages. Trust is essential. Making sacrifices for each other and for the family is necessary. If we don’t practice these skills now, we can’t expect to suddenly become good at them when the right time comes.
Hookup culture doesn’t allow us to practice these skills in college. Hookups are defined by the American Psychological Association as “brief, uncommitted sexual encounters between individuals who are not romantic partners or dating each other.” Data suggests that between 60 to 80 percent of North American college students have experienced a hookup. Hookups throw commitment out of the window, as students can easily find other sexual partners without expecting anything long term. Hookups don’t allow us to practice the emotional maturity that’s required for a long-term romantic relationship and eventually marriage. We need to know how to initiate a relationship using words rather than physical intimacy, how to communicate emotional needs during a relationship, and how to handle conflicts and breakups thoughtfully and with care. Hookups teach us that it is okay to walk away from other people and from emotional responsibilities without dealing with any of their consequences.
Furthermore, hookups teach us to instrumentalize other people’s bodies for pleasure. Yes, endorphins are released during sex. But at what cost? Sex, both physically and emotionally, communicates a giving of oneself to another. When the intention of the act — pleasure — breaks from the clear, physical communication, the brain experiences a disconnect. I have heard friends tell me that they have felt dehumanized as a result of having casual sex. They were not appreciated and loved for who they were, but instead used as a means for pleasure.
Social psychology has shown that women, compared to men, tend to experience greater levels of “regret, anxiety, and decreased overall mental wellbeing” after casual sex. A study of about 1,400 undergraduate students found that as a consequence of casual sex, 27.1 percent of respondents felt embarrassed, 24.7 percent had emotional difficulties, 20.8 percent felt a loss of respect, and 10 percent reported having difficulties maintaining a relationship. Moreover, a different study of 832 college students found that 49 percent of women reported having negative emotions following a hookup, compared to just 26 percent of men. For the sake of all of us, but especially women, we must change the norms surrounding hookup culture.
Regardless of gender, one may go into a hookup wanting casual sex before realizing that the experience has left them wanting something more long-term. At this point, it may be too late. It seems that though hookups may seem like a risk-free, no-strings-attached option — allowing students to pursue their studies without dealing with a long-term relationship — there are mental and emotional side-effects of hooking up that speak to a deeper truth about what we really want. Sex without the deeper emotional connection that the act seemed to have promised feels empty.
Yes, you can become accustomed to having casual sex and become desensitized to the negative feelings associated with it. But do we really want to get desensitized from a function of our bodies that is actually meant to be beautiful and life-giving?
Irresponsibility and dehumanization are not the habits we want to take away from college into our future relationships. Princeton, by failing to address the negative effects of hookup culture, is not adequately preparing us to love well, even as it goes to great lengths to prioritize career readiness and other forms of student wellness. Through presentations on safe sex, the University attempts to remedy the results of hookup culture.
Rather than normalizing hookup culture, Princeton can use orientation to make incoming first-years more aware of the dangers of hooking up so that students feel less of a pressure to engage in it, or at least receive adequate information about its harms. The SHARE play, which teaches first-years about interpersonal violence, and the Safer Sexpo, which focuses on sexual health, could highlight this information. Even as we progress through Princeton, SHARE training material for upperclass students in eating clubs can incorporate information about the potential negative effects of hookup culture. Let’s elevate sex to the beautiful and sacred act that it is meant to be.
Julianna Lee is a junior from Demarest, NJ, majoring in Politics. She can be reached at julianna.lee[at]princeton.edu. Julianna is a big fan of road trips and has been to 43 states.
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