Hooking up generally involves casual sex with noncommittal partners. Hooking up is prevalent on college campuses today and can negatively affect the identity development of female students. The authors examined this phenomenon with a feminist developmental perspective, evaluating hooking up in the context of sexual risk taking with physical and psychosocial consequences.
Developmentally, college students are at a point in their lives where they are beginning to differentiate from their families and explore new identities (Arnett, 2000). This exploration can include experimenting with new sexual behaviors. Today, college students are engaging in more casual sexual interactions that may or may not involve an intimate relationship, and these more casual sexual encounters typically involve alcohol, resulting in an increase in sexual risk taking among this population (Lambert, Kahn, & Apple, 2003). These casual sexual interactions, or hooking up, can result in health consequences as well as identity confusion, low self-esteem, and a sense of discouragement among college women (Gilmartin, 2006;Paul & Hayes, 2002).
This article examines the relationship between the hooking-up culture of casual sex and the identity development of female students on college campuses today. We view this potential conflicted relationship from a developmental and feminist perspective, evaluating hooking up in the context of sexual risk taking with physical and psychosocial consequences. Factors influencing this behavior among female college students and recommendations for how college campuses can address this phenomenon are addressed.