Maybe we should consider the impact of dating apps and hookup culture at large on our ability to form genuine, long lasting, romantic connections....
When we swipe right on a stranger’s face, are we swiping away our chances at a long term relationship? Students Mikayla Brown and Andrew Abraham are familiar with our generation’s often unhealthy obsession with hookup culture, which could prevent us from establishing fulfilling connections in many aspects of our lives after UT.
Mikayla, a fifth year psychology major in her last semester at UT, believes that dating apps are the primary enablers of hookup culture for our generation. “There’s such a surplus of options that when you go on these apps it’s with the mentality of like, ‘well if this doesn’t work out, I have 100 other people to choose from… tonight.’” She adds that meeting someone virtually is “easier” in that it involves a lot less social risk. “If someone doesn't answer your text, that's one thing. But if someone turns you down in front of all of your friends? Okay, that's really scary. Through a screen it’s pretty discreet, and it depersonalizes the experience because it feels like you’re talking to a picture rather than a person.”
Andrew, a second year finance major, believes that the fundamentals of materialism and consumerism, facilitated by social media, are the culprits of hookup culture. “We’ve been taught as a humanity that the more we have the more valid we are, i.e., our identity is determined by the things that we possess or have power over. But what that means in today’s era is that the masculine identity is based upon the women that you’re having those engagements with, or those you have the potential to.” Andrew believes there are three parts to this mentality. “One: we think that the more that we have, the more we are. Two, the value of what we have is determined by our society’s popular thought; we say ‘this type of girl or guy is better,’ because it’s like the transitive property of ‘I am hot, so I can attract this commodity which is worth more in the marketplace.’ Then, finally, we use social media to engage in the act, reaffirming the entire scheme.”
Some say that our generation’s freedom to so openly choose who to have casual relationships with is “empowering.” Andrew disagrees, and thinks that hookup culture, particularly when facilitated by dating apps, creates an infrastructure where we treat people as physical commodities that are only valuable for physical exchange. “Because essentially,” he says, “what users are taught to do by using these ‘swipe-right apps’ is to make micro judgments. Within a span of three and a half seconds, you've already looked at her eyes, her body, and decided: ‘is this a valuable commodity, or not?’” Andrew shares that, to him, the word ‘empowerment’ should instill a sense of self worth, which he believes is not the result of casual hookups. “Using these exchanges to confirm our identities teaches us to start looking at our existence through the purely physical lens,” he says. “That's the issue here. We now all believe that our worth is dictated by our abs, height, style, how many followers we have, because these are all attributes and factors that get us closer to participating in this exchange.”
Mikayla agrees that while she understands the argument for empowerment, hookup culture has created a mindset that “can get very toxic very quickly.” She highlights Bumble, a dating app designed to “empower” women to make the first move by allowing only them to start (and in theory then control) the conversation. She explains that “the idea is that you as a woman get to choose your sexual partner, take control of your own sexuality, etc. And while I think it empowers people in a very literal sense, it's also cultivating a really insecure type of person.” “On top of that,” Mikayla adds, “I think it makes the line between sex and love really blurry. It becomes harder to understand peoples’ actual interests because everyone's on a different page, even if they say they're on the same one.” Mikayla shares that from her own experiences, hookup culture is not conducive to finding committed romantic relationships at all. While she admits to being a user of dating apps, she reinforces the idea that it’s only for “transactional” relationships. She sees herself as having the ability to separate these casual experiences from emotional ones, but adds that it is a pretty unhealthy outlook to have.
She highlights an interesting sense of pressure that dating app users feel to experience ‘empowerment’ by this transactional communication. “It’s incredibly dehumanizing,” she says, “and there are stages to it. At first it’s straight up denial, the ‘wait, no, they probably didn't mean to be that forward.’ But then you realize they did. And then it’s like, ‘oh, well, if he meant it, then I'm gonna match that and do it too.’ And even if we don't really want it, we feel like we have to because we start to think ‘I don't want to give this random stranger any kind of power – this is supposed to be empowering me, right?’ Right…and then, after a while, you just keep making these meaningless transactions, and it becomes literally five texts into a conversation and we’re exchanging addresses, you know?” A
ndrew points out that these habits could extend into our future commitments as well. He sees loneliness as the driving force for “this pursuit of companionship,” but thinks that the consistent lack of emotional fulfillment from these casual engagements turns into “generational brokenness.” “It eventually leads us to not be able to commit to things like jobs and relationships,” Andrew says. “We’re so focused on seeking out the physical highs, the immediate gratification of casual hookups, that we won’t be able to withstand the lows of relationships. And when someone does come along who might embody that genuine love and unconditional longevity, it's the opposite of what we've been taught to seek, so we’re afraid of that potential closeness.”
“Hence the reason why I’m single,” he laughs to himself, shaking his head