Mason, Maya: Sexual Heath

            The article “Study Casts Skeptical Light on Campus ‘Hookup Culture’” states students are not having less sex or “hooking up” less, instead it is merely the language this generation uses has changed. Students use the term “hook up” to mean many different things. Whether a student means sex, making-out, or even foreplay all depends on how that person understood the word, and how others perceive it.

            Though the language is changing, I believe the privacy of students’ lives is changing more. Today, students are much more open about their sex lives than in years past. The study shows that our generation is having less sex; however, students use so many different words and phrases to describe their sex lives that one study cannot keep up with what each term actually means to each individual.

            Since I wasn’t alive in the 1980s, I do not know firsthand what the student culture was like then, but I have heard many stories from different mentors in my life. I have been told from many perspectives that people in the 1980s did in fact, have sex before marriage but it was usually with the same person over a long period of time. When looking at today’s student culture, we assume they have many different partners throughout their lifetime. The reality is, language has changed so much, and we can’t tell what is fact or fiction.

 I conclude that students in my generation do “hookup” more often than the generations before us because they do not want to get attached to one person. The students I come in contact with want to have the pleasure from sex without the obligations of being in a relationship.