Hooking Up in the 21st Century
By Stella Speridon-Violet
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If dating apps were designed to make my life easier, then they did a pretty shitty job.
Somewhere between the doom-scrolling through your likes, reading objectifying opening lines, and men whose love language is physical touch, something clearly went wrong.
Or maybe nothing went wrong at all, maybe this is exactly how hooking up in the 21st century was meant to feel: efficient, ambiguous, and completely soul-numbing.
For the sake of journalism (and personal masochism), I re-downloaded Hinge while writing this. So buckle up. I suffered, and now you get to benefit
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Hookup culture today isn’t about sex, not really. It’s about learning how to beat the game.
It’s about reading between the lines of unanswered texts, decoding what “short-term relationship” actually means, and pretending not to care while caring just enough to check your phone one more time. It’s about access without accountability, intimacy without language, and the pressure to be chill at all costs.
I think about Gone Girl a lot when I think about hookup culture. Guys want “cool girl,” they want you to be wrapped around their finger, so they can easily fling you off the second the next best thing comes along on their screens.
One thing that’s become clear in 2025 is that Gen Z doesn’t actually want hollow connections; we want deeper ones, we just don’t quite know how to get there.
According to Hinge’s 2025 Gen Z D.A.T.E. Report, 84% of Gen Z Hinge daters want to find new ways to build deeper connections with the people they’re dating, even as hesitation, old norms, and mixed signals keep getting in the way.
What’s really wild? Gen Z isn’t avoiding emotion because we don’t crave it; we’re actually more hesitant than millennials to dive into more meaningful conversation on a first date. The report found that Gen Z daters are 36% more likely than millennials to hesitate before starting a deep conversation early on.
That contradiction of wanting vulnerability but being afraid to show it is peak 21st-century hookup culture. Instead of leaning in, we hover in the gray zone, afraid of being “too much” or being seen as invested.
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Some people treat hookup culture as if it’s all just freedom and liberation, but the reality is more tangled.
In a review of Lisa Wade’s American Hookup, Thing of Things writer Ozy Brennan cuts through a common assumption about hookup culture with brutal clarity,
“American Hookup is a thing anyone is doing,” Brennan writes, but it’s not *The Way We’re Doing Dating Today.”
That distinction matters.
Hookup culture, at least the version described in Wade’s ethnography, was once rooted in specific college social structures like drunk parties, ambiguous consent norms, gossip, and a bizarre, often exploitative ritual of emotional distancing afterward.
That doesn’t mean that everyone is doing it, or that it defines all Gen Z dating, it just means we’re inheriting scripts from a culture that prioritizes performance over presence. The problem isn’t hooking up; it’s how we’ve learned to dehumanize the very people we’re meant to connect with.
And, dating apps make everything so much more disconnected; it feels like I’m scheduling a hookup. I’m not flirting, I’m coordinating logistics. Whose place? What time? What are we comfortable with? And somehow this is supposed to feel normal?
Because it doesn’t.
It feels like intimacy without curiosity. And, most of the time, we don’t even get to know each other in the slightest, which takes away the natural chemistry you’re supposed to have, even before a hookup.
Think of it like this: You’re at the bar with all of your friends, and you’ve been exchanging glances with a hot person from across the room. The tension builds up throughout the night, you chat briefly, dance, and eventually decide to go home together.
That chemistry had been built up for a decent, not perfect, but decent amount of time. But, regardless, that buildup makes a world of difference when it comes to intimacy.
Versus, you’re on Hinge, Tinder, Grindr, whatever, late at night, exchange maybe a few sentences, and next thing you know, you're at some stranger’s house. Where you’ll leave as quickly as you came.
Unfortunately, I have engaged in this behavior, and every time was left feeling used and bored. I thought not getting to know someone would make me less likely to attach to them, but it actually just made the whole experience meaningless.
Like everyone is terrified of talking, because they think that might make things real.
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Hinge even has a term for this, the “communication gap,” the space between the connection we want and the communication we actually give. Most of us are afraid to ask thoughtful questions, even though the majority of daters say being asked real questions makes them more interested.
So we settle for silence. We settle for situationships that never ask us to define ourselves or our desires. And, we try to pretend we don’t care by not texting back fast after a hookup so we don’t seem clingy, even when we really aren’t.
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That’s the problem with “casual,” guys claim they want the friendship aspect, but when women actually try to get to know them to keep the spark alive, guys mistake that for obsession.
The truth is, gentlemen, I’m trying to create and form a steady attraction to you beyond just physical, which is what you asked for in the first place!
I’m not in love with you.
But sure, I won’t text you back for hours and pretend I don’t care just so you can get it through your thick skull that I’m not interested in anything serious.
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I guess hookup culture in 2025 isn’t about sex, it’s about avoidance. It’s about wanting intimacy while pretending we don’t. It’s about craving depth while staying safely on the surface.
And maybe the real rebellion isn’t in deleting the apps or pretending we don’t care, maybe it’s letting ourselves be earnest again.
Learning not to care as much about whether you get a text back from someone you’re sleeping with. Saying what you mean when you feel a miscommunication. Risking being “too much” in a world that keeps rewarding emotional minimalism.
Because if your “situationship” doesn’t want to actually get to know you, like at all, I promise you, they are not worth it. That’s not “casual,” that's just someone using you when they feel like it because they know you’ll let them.
There is no “right” way to end this article, and I wish I had all of the answers I so desperately was seeking. I have a lot more to talk about on this subject, but if I don’t break it down into multiple articles, focused on specific topics, it’d be a 15,000-word analysis of modern dating and the culture surrounding it.
I can offer some tips for navigating something “casual.”
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Be real with yourself. Men in their early twenties are usually only looking for one thing on dating apps. And that is hooking up.
A lot of them are recently getting out of relationships, so you’ll have to be okay dealing with some emotional wrecks.
Always ask beforehand if they’ve been tested, and please, for the love of god, be safe. Especially if you live in a college town where STDs are common…
Take the time to figure out what you truly want out of each relationship, and make sure to communicate. Men, for the most part, are liars; they will say pretty much anything to get in your pants.
It’s up to you to decide if you want to let them, and if you’re looking for something truly casual, or if you’re the type of person to catch feelings. Which is okay too!
Just because everyone’s doing it doesn’t mean you have to.
Because beating this sick game of “dating app hell” isn’t actually winning. And acting like you don’t care doesn’t mean you don’t.
